#just another reminder that to americans the best thing you can be is Thin and everything else comes after your body size

[betty-burnout]

ozempic and other glp-1s really feel like medically sanctioned anorexia

[meilas]

Socks' Ultimate Phantoms list, part two

PART ONE

Phantoms, continued:

David Thaxton - Had this moment in Final Lair where it looked like he’d had a heart attack, and then Christine put her hands over his on his heart and just—🥺 David Arnsperger - Had a wild self-caress right before MOTN where he rocked backward. That's it, that's all I remember. John Cudia - I remember actively not liking his Phantom the first time I saw him, but I changed my mind at his Final Lair because it was so good. Jonathan Roxmouth - Has a slightly nasally tone and a slightly deeper voice than a lot of Phantoms. He did not have good pants. Actually the worst pants I’ve ever seen. Looks like a cinnamon roll, is not afraid to burn you if you’ve wronged him. I also don’t like how his wig looks like thinning hair at the very front. Tim Martin Gleason - Don't ask me why, I just like him okay. James Romick - Really like his voice. Does an excellent sad. Derrick Davis - Fantastic voice. Brought a touch of humanity to that awful restaged show and made it worth watching. Wish we could have seen him in Real POTO. Great ass. Brent Barrett - I remember liking him. Thomas James O’Leary - Good acting, good voice. Jon Robyns - Makes excellent noises during the Final Lair. Good voice. James Gant - Works best with Eva Shanu-Wilson. Okay acting, but nothing else really going on. Occasional good moments. Thomas Borchert - Unfairly pretty, beautiful voice, excellent choices during Final Lair, MOTN was mesmerizing. Bit of a slut. Top ten for sure.

Christines: Lisa Vroman - An "older" Christine. Great chemistry with Franc D'Ambrosio. Initiated a gentle hand-holding during the ring return with him which was an excellent choice that I don’t often see. Made some other excellent choices throughout the show in reacting to what was happening around her. Looks like she could kill you, is a cinnamon roll except when she’s going to kill you. Elizabeth Southard - Another "older" Christine. Love her. The best chemistry with Gary Mauer, her irl husband. Also had great chemistry with Jim Weitzer, who was her Raoul. Very, very good actor. Looks like a cinnamon roll, is a cinnamon roll but only for her husband, otherwise she can and will kill. Luzia Nistler - Love her voice. Austrian. (Like German, but elegant.) Emilie Kouatchou - I wanted to like her. But she has a ton of vibrato and she sounds like a child. I also don't care for her acting. She looked like she was only doing what she was told, rather than reacting to things happening around her. Meghan Picerno - I don't remember anything about her. I saw her live right after the reopening. Celinde Schoenmaker - I've only heard audio of her but I remember liking her. Kanisha Feliciano - Good Wishing. Looks fabulous in the blue dress. I love her wigs more than any other Christine. Hers doesn’t look like a frizzy mess. Lucy St Louis - She played a very sympathetic Christine, and has such a beautiful voice. Lily Kerhoas - fierce. Loved the anger she had in Final Lair. Holly Anne-Hull - too much vibrato Paige Blankson - too much vibrato

Raouls: Christopher Carl - Didn't get to see much of him owing to the fact that the boots he's in are Phantom-centered highlights. The little I have seen of him has been excellent though. I've heard an audio boot of him as the Phantom and it was excellent. Has a more "American" pronunciation than most Phantoms. ("ay" vs "ah") Ciaran Sheehan - I like him better as Raoul than as the Phantom. He was ready to throw hands. Has a very stilted way of singing that reminds me of the few clips of Colm Wilkinson, but sounds better than Colm. Willing to troll his associates irl. Bronson Norris Murphy - A. Dorable. The best. Looks like a cinnamon roll, is a cinnamon roll. Could probably do a murder if pushed far enough. Have heard audio and now seen a boot and he’s a protective Raoul. Hands down my favourite Raoul. John Riddle - Saw him live right after the reopening. I don't remember anything specific about him. Paul Schaefer - Nice chest. Matt Blaker - meh

[liselicanis]

Even Dreams Fall Apart

[AO3] [Ch1]

Chapter 2: And I Am Drowning in Regret

The inside of the airship feels claustrophobic. Being inside Tokki’s cockpit was one thing, but being sandwiched between people was something else entirely. Brigitte is on her right, leaning over to show her a K-pop group she had recently gotten interested in, and had gotten excited when Hana told her that she’s met the group a couple of times before during game events. Apparently they were, like, the avatar mascots for a game or something like that. 

“That is so cool! You think we can go to one of their concerts together someday?” the Swedish shieldmaiden practically had stars in her eyes, and Hana couldn’t help but laugh.

“Definitely, I can maybe even get us backstage passes. No promises though. If anything, I can at least get us the best seats in the venue.” It was a small distraction, one that she can eagerly participate in. “Of course you’ll come too, right?”

Across from them, Lucio was turning his Sonic Amplifier in his hands, fidgeting with the dials and some of the buttons on the side. He seemed a little nervous, obviously not too enthused about returning to Paraiso. Hana hadn’t been there when Overwatch first picked him up, but she later learned that Null Sector had been there. There were still some remnants leftover from that, so they were going to clean up the last of them.

Or something along those lines. 

And that probably meant that he wasn’t there. If he had been, then he was long gone. Hana swallowed thickly and did her best to continue smiling, reaching over to give her fellow superstar a reassuring pat on his knee. 

“Uh, yeah. I’m just a little worried about my club. I’m sure I locked it up tight before we left, but I don’t think locks are that effective against the big guys, heheh.” Lucio smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. “Will be more than a little bummed if it’s totally trashed. But hey, so long as we can drive Null Sector out, I’m satisfied enough. Maybe I’ll even throw a celebratory concert afterwards.”

They all settled somewhat after that, Hana leaning back against her cramped seat to see if she could catch a small nap before they landed near the beachfront(‘Only space big enough for this big girl,’ Lena had said, giving the ship’s controls a very fond pat). Even if Ramattra wasn't there, at the very least she can have a hand in thinning out his army. 

–

When she opens her eyes again, it’s like she’s back in her workshop. She’s sitting on the couch with a remote in hand, her legs crossed underneath her. The holoscreen is projecting a movie, but at the moment, she isn’t interested. Rather, she’s more focused on exactly who is sitting next to her, his staff leaning against the couch’s side.

Ramattra’s attention is focused on the screen, but after a moment, he turns to her. The red dots on his forehead all gleam brightly in the dark room, and she’s oddly reminded of some old American movie that had some (at the time) rising actor with aliens who were hunters or something. His cables that were attached to his head really did remind her of the antagonistic entity.

Never mind that, what the fuck was going on? Why was she sitting next to him as if they were friends? She should be on an airship somewhere over the Atlantic right now.

He seems amused by her confusion, if the little vent he lets out is anything to go by, and tilts his head curiously, “What?” 

She can vaguely hear the sounds of the movie playing, but Hana pays it no mind, only staring at this omnic. It really wasn’t fair. Maybe once upon a time seeing him next to her like this would have made her happy but right now? It was upsetting.

Sighing, she drew her legs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. She gets it. Of course it’s just another stupid dream. Whatever. “…You’re not real.”

She can hear the near silent whirr of his cooling fans, and the click of his joints as he moves away, standing up to pick up his weapon. He doesn’t aim at her though, merely examines it. “No, I suppose I am not. But this is something you once wanted, is it not?” 

Her eyes widen and she practically leaps out of her seat as if he’s thrown scalding hot water on her. No way. There was no way he would know any of that. Had she entertained such thoughts before? Perhaps, but not once did she ever admit it out loud to anyone. The most she had allowed herself to do while fixing him was holding his hand and that was when it hadn’t been attached to his body.

He continued, “You wanted me to stay, didn’t you?”

Her gun is in her hand before she even realizes it, as if she willed it into existence. No wait, she probably did, this is her dream after all. She can feel tears pricking at her eyes as she inhales a deep breath and takes aim. “Don’t you fucking dare do this to me.”

“I still owe you for helping me, Hana.” Ramattra extended his hand to her, the crook of his staff now lowered to the ground. 

“SHUT UP!”

The trigger is pulled and her entire dream collapses.

—

Someone is lightly shaking her shoulder, and immediately Hana wakes to find Cassidy grinning at her. “We’re here, darlin’. You all right? You were frownin’ an awful lot.” 

Sticking her tongue out at the cowboy, she unbuckled herself and stretched out her arms over her head. “Nn, yeah. Just feeling a little cramped. You’re all used to this though, huh?” Damn it, get it together, girl. They can’t know about any of the shit that's been troubling her. Of the secret she is hiding.  

“Been a couple o’ years for me, but yeah. Though I wasn’t uh…” he fell silent and merely chuckled, shaking his head. “It could have been worse. As fine a scientist as Winston is, sometimes you don’t want to stay cooped up with him for too long.” He waved a hand in front of his nose, and grinned.

“Oh hoooh.”

–

Once on the beach, Hana climbed inside Tokki, her heart thumping hard inside her chest. Her dreams seemed to be getting worse, making up scenarios that never happened. And even in them, he wasn’t even mocking her with his words. Simple questions stated as facts. 

Shaking her head, Hana tried to clear her mind as the team went over their plan to weed out any remaining Null Sector units left in the favela. She could see the faces of concerned civilians peeking out from one of the taller buildings, and absentmindedly maneuvered Tokki’s left cannon to wave at them. Amazing how they hadn’t left yet, but looking beyond the once pristine  beach, she could see why.

Where would they go?

“D.va, let’s go!” 

“Right! Game on!”

—

It wasn’t hard to find the remnants of Null Sector, not much can really hide an omnic that is almost as big as your mech. Hana used her defense matrix to cover Cassidy while he stared down their enemies, confirming their positions before firing all six of his bullets into five different targets. Lena finished off the last one, the Eradicator letting out one final droning sound before collapsing onto the pavement. 

Lucio let out a whoop as he jumped off the wall he had been riding on, dancing just out of reach of some Slicers and finished them off with a blast from his Amplifier. “Damn, we’re so good at this. Hey, Hana, nice moves there!”

Even though it was hard to see, she was grinning back at him. “Of course! It’s my job to protect you guys after all! I think we can push up a bit more, there’s gotta be a place we can hold out for a bit while we get our bearings.” 

Halting in front of her mech, Lucio pointed to a garage door that had been partially blasted open. “Like that? Can see if we can get a quick little fix up. My tech can only restore so much and also…” he looked behind her, where Brigitte was busy smashing in a Nulltrooper that they had missed, “yeah.”

Brigitte swung her flail one last time, decapitating the omnic and watched it fall to the ground. With a grim look, she kneeled and rummaged around until she found a panel to pry open. The others watched curiously as she carefully sifted through wires and circuits until she finally sighed and stood up. “I thought that maybe we could take one back and see if we could reverse engineer Null Sector’s tech but I don’t think that will be possible.”

Cassidy whistled at her work, hand in his pocket until he pulled out a lighter to light the cigar on his lips. “You’re starting to remind me more and more of Reindhardt, you know.” Brigitte smiled, and hefted her mace over her shoulders. “In a good way of course.”

“I am his squire after all.”

Chuckling, he motioned for the team to follow him into the garage Lucio had pointed out. “Yeah, yeah, just don’t charge in like he does.”

Hana smiled as she pressed a few buttons to get Tokki to lower itself down so she could hop out. Lena came closer and held out a hand for her to take, which she did and finally stepped out onto the ground. Fallen Null Sector troops littered the ground and Hana grimaced over the efforts it would take to clean all this shit up. Her gaze wandered to the sky where one ship remained, but she had been assured that it wasn’t actively creating new units. For the moment at least.

They’ll tackle that later, but right now clearing out the remnants came first.

[badluvkii]

tjings i associate with ateez new album songs bc of my synesthesia

ive only processed the unit songs so far because it takes a while to get a full image

matz : matz was one i saw more witu pattern more than objects / a scene before but i always had a metallic silver of the pattern , then i associated it with broken metal , like if a car got in a crash and left debris and crashed glass and stuff , black tar concrete . i didn’t see a color other than grey , silver , black for a while but i started recently to see specifically seonghwa with blood red and hongjoong in dark purple almost indigo . i usually have a flash of pink in a lot of ateez songs wjen hongjoong sings tho, not every song tho , it’s pretty rare that happens but hongjoong is very hot pink in cyberpunk . the pattern is thick and sharp and metallic silver . could cut u probably if it was a real object . it’s like a demolition site , danger , car chases and like racing . it’s so cool honestly

it’s you : i saw it like the end of the perfume mv , which is good in my opinion bc perfume is my song of the year . it’s purple and pink with a bit of blue . i saw flowers and bright lights . the song is in a dark environment, pretty sure it’s nigjt . it has vibes of when you’re drunk in another country at night at bars that are well decorated with flowers and lights and pretty . cool air , i feel my skin is cool wjen i hear it , good for me because i love that specific temperature due to my skin being sensitive to heat . i can see streetligjts like memories wjen i go out at night after meeting family wjen i travel to both of my home countries to see my family and go out drinking by my own after . happy vibes . i know it’s a seductive song but it gives me good vibes like i’m tipsy and tbh i’m usually horny when i’m tipsy so it makes sense lmao . i have a few good rated 18+ memories i associate , bc i like to party , that i’m not gonna go into bc this is family friendly lnao but not as much as i’ve experienced in my life only a few wholesome 18+ memories bc i don’t particularly see it as THAT sexual . it gives perfume vibes too i can see water too like a late night pool party ?? i don’t see perfume the way the mv depicts it but i LOVE perfume’s mv . this is perfume . the pattern is more pastel than i see the image , thin circular shapes with only sharp bits at the end . almost like vines . i mainly see pastel pink and a little of pastel purple with it

youth : it’s the hardest one i have thougjt about . it reminds me of a highshcool night when you get out of school and go to a field with your best friend and just sit there and have a deep and fun conversation. it’s a sunset (? is that the orange one?) oh well it’s light orange sky fading to yellow and the sun is going down . the grass is green but have a deeper colour like lower saturation . but there is a massive grass area with no trees in front and behind there is a large tree area like a forest . you can see the sky perfectly there’s no things obstructing your vision . i’m familiar with it and it gives me a warm nostalgia. rn i’m listening and it’s cold winter below freezing and it makes me feel warmer . i see it as orange and yellow and i also associate it with seeing sunflowers and smelling freshly cut grass (which i love) . it’s like a slightly later feild picnic with your best friend in the whole world , full with ur fav snacks. the pattern is very hard to see in all honesty but it expands outwards softly like a non-agressive firework and flows as the song goes , it moves with the song , that’s why it’s so hard to see

everything : sadly , i haven’t experienced how this feels because i don’t have the money to do this which sucks hard bc i’m jongho biased . i see it like the romcom movies in an american bar (i’m not american so i’m guessing i’m sorry if it’s inaccurate but i’ve seen stuff like this in movies) where they have the singers (jongho) in suits and playing the pianos and there’s sparkly walls by almost tinsel like things on them and the whole room is dazzling , the singers eyes are sparkling and the sparkles in the champagne are glistening while the soft warm toned ligjts hit it . all of the people inside are rich people in gorgeous black and white dresses with pearls and silks and the men have tailored suits made of rich velvet all sat on tables , mainly two-tables for couples . it’s a romantic night . i see everything like black and white , but a warm tone in it too?? (like bendy and the ink machine color pallete but the beige is more of a warm goldish-tone) . this migjt me bwinf jongho ulted and i love him so much it’s like almost a fanfic lmao but it’s like the feeling of you’re the singer’s lover and you’re watching their performance in adoration . yeah it migjt just be me being jongho biased and the love i feel is how much he means to me but it gives me that emotional feeling . the pattern is like cursive writing and old architecture structures kind of look to it . it’s intricate and detailed , it’s really beautiful

[luveline]

Hotchner with a housewife reader? Like just this pretty little strawberry patterned apron cottage core vibe wife who just loves him and looking after Jack and stuff

hotch with his tired housewife reader ♡ 1k words

You look tired in the softest way. 

"You can help me pour this one if you want to, Jackie," you say. 

Hotch's chest aches with fondness. You sound exhausted, and he knows it's his fault for coming in late last night. He's learned by now that you're always gonna wait up for him, it doesn't matter how often he tells you not to, and as a result you're nearly as tired as he is.

Exhausted, but you're speaking to Jack like he's the most precious thing on earth. 

"I don't want to spill it," he says worriedly. 

Still, he crowds your legs. You get your hands under his armpits and pick him up, a blur of blue and white matching pyjamas. Hotch has his own pair, somewhere. 

You slot Jack onto the countertop next to the frying pan.

"Can you hold on to me? You're not gonna fall, baby, but it will make me feel better." 

Jack screws his hand into your front. 

"Okie-smokie," you mumble. "Um. Okay, first, the pan needs some more…" You pour a generous amount of oil into the frying pan and spread it around. "Jack, you know how hot this is, right?"

"Too hot to touch." 

"Yeah, baby," — you yawn, your shoulders stretching back until they click — "too hot. Good boy." 

Hotch reminds himself to give you a good massage. 

"How much do I pour?" Jack asks curiously. 

"I'll tell you when to stop."  

Hotch quite likes watching you both. He doesn't doubt that you love Jack, but seeing you alone together only cements it. He'd be ashamed to say you spend more time with Jack than he does if he didn't know how well you look after him. Look after them both. 

"Good morning," he says, announcing his presence. 

"Daddy, I'm cooking," Jack informs, peeking at him from over your shoulder. 

Hotch smiles. "Yeah, buddy, I can see that." 

You lift your head but don't turn from the frying pan where you're trying to make Jack's pancake pancake-shaped. "Good morning, handsome," you murmur.

He comes to stand at your hip, nudging you over so he can take over Jack duties. "Where's your apron, honey?" he asks gently. 

You always get so sad when oil ruins your clothes. He knows your heart would break if you ruined your matching ones. You'd been ecstatic when he first gave them to you. 

His question works to wake you up some. "I totally forgot," you say with a huge smile. "Watch the pancake." 

"Yes, ma'am," he says, carding a hand through Jack's soft hair. 

It's more of a crepe than a classic American pancake, thin and crisping on the edges. He accepts the spatula you offer him and then your distracted kiss against his shoulder, your hand squeezing his bicep. "Good morning," you say again. 

He doesn't have time to kiss you back. You walk to the alcove left of the kitchen door and pull out your new apron, a vinyl, shiny cream colour dotted in dainty red strawberries. You tie the strings at the back and then insecurity flutters over your face. 

"Do I look okay?" you ask.

"Yes," Jack says, the word clumsily said but extremely earnest. "It's pretty!" 

"You look very pretty, honey," he agrees. 

Insecurity turns to flustered delight. "Thanks, boys." 

Hotch plates up Jack's pancake and helps him down off of the counter, stealing a quick hug from him. 

"Daddy," he protests.

"What?"

Jack grins at him and sprints to the kitchen table as soon as he lets go, climbing into his seat with a cheer. "Pancakes!" 

"Come on, buddy," he chides mildly, "that's your best friend. Be polite." 

"Pancakes, please, Y/N." 

You share a secret smile with Hotch. There's a little crystal of sleep in the corner of your eye that he needs to wipe away. He waits for you to finish pouring another pancake before he tries it. 

"Honey," he murmurs, sliding a hand behind your neck, thumb encouraging your chin up. 

You have total trust in him. You don't flinch at his fingertip poking at the corner of your eye, which is a feat in itself because his fingers aren't exactly small. He dislodges the sleep and forgets all about it, diverted by your expression. It melts him how he melts you, your immediate deflation under his hands and how you relax when he's near. 

"D'you wanna sit down?" he asks. 

You rest your cheek heavily in his hand. "No, it's my turn to make breakfast. Don't," — you yawn again, hiding your open mouth with his palm, "try it, Hotchner." 

"It's always your turn to make breakfast, if you're to be believed." 

"I like making you breakfast." 

He inches forward until his nose is whispering over your cheek. "I know," he whispers, kissing your jaw. "I like making you breakfast, too." He gives you a much firmer kiss, tone lifting into self-righteousness. "That's why you should let me. Stop being selfish." 

You try to gasp in indignation but end up laughing instead, pushing at his chest with insincere hands. 

"I can make breakfast," Jack offers hopefully. 

You smile at Hotch in your Please can I spoil him? sort of way. He has no choice but to smile back. 

"You," you say, pleased, "can eat this pancake. And another one after that. With sugar." 

Jack laughs in a similar pleasure, that saccharine sweet, indulgent giggling that makes Hotch love him impossibly more. Love you both more. You turn back to your frying pan and he kisses the slice of skin before your ear, giving your poor shoulders a squeeze full of promise. 

A massage, he thinks. You deserve a whole spa treatment. Lucky that the holidays are coming up. 

"Be reasonable," he says as he turns away from you, opening the small sugar jar and offering it to Jack with a spoon. 

Jack is not reasonable. He dumps a heaping pile of sugar straight into the middle of his pancake. Your charmed laughter from the stove makes it difficult to tell him off. Hotch gives up when he realises he can't stop laughing. 

[goldenkirstein]

aot band! au headcanons pt. 1:

pt. two here

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

pairing: jean x fem! reader, eren x fem! reader, zeke x fem! reader

wc: 1.2k+

cw: smut (18+ minors DNI), reader has female anatomy, manipulation/corruption, dumbification/incoherence, sorta dubcon (?), mentions of spit, cockwarming, unprotected sex, cursing, dirty talk, creampie/breeding, cumplay, degradation, perv! zeke.

a/n: okayyyyy, so im reposting this, because i didn't like it the first time i posted it lol. i added and cut out some things still don't know if i really like it. anyways, i tried my best with tagging everything, i really hope i didn't miss anything, if i did please let me know. this is my first time writing anything smutty, i'd love to hear any feedback or criticism !!

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

smut under the cut

jean kirstein

Jean would play the electric guitar.

He wouldn't have any big tattoos but tiny stick and pokes, but when he takes off his shirt, there would be this giant, intricate tattoo that spans his entire back.

He wears thin white t-shirts that cling to his body when he gets all sweaty from performing or when he douses himself in water because the lights make it really hot on stage, babe. The shirt becomes practically see-through, and when he turns around, you can see the outline of the back tattoo. You swear he does it on purpose.

HIS HANDS, calloused from hours of practice, wears chunky silver rings that make his long fingers stand out. He keeps his ring finger empty, though (he's a romantic and a big ol’ softie).

When he's writing songs or can't figure out what chord would sound right, he plays with his rings. He takes them off, sliding them up and down his finger until he's satisfied and moves on to the others.

It drives him insane if he sees you singing along to his songs at the concerts. He'll smirk at you, opting for a quick wink, before getting back to performing.

After the show, he’ll pull you into his lap, in whatever empty room is available. He’ll have his hands on your hips, the cold rings contrasting against your hot skin.

His heart would be beating so fast, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He just got off stage, and here you are, grinding down on the growing bulge in his pants, driving him crazy.

On most days, he liked it when you would fuck him post-show, sliding your skirt up and sink down on his cock.

He loved watching you fuck yourself dumb around him, tits bouncing in his face, head thrown back in pleasure. His cock would reduce you into an incoherent blubbering mess. The only thing making sense was the way you were chanting his name like a prayer.

this fucker would love to whisper the most filthy things in your ear, “you’re making such a mess around my cock, petal. You’re gonna be a good slut and clean it up after, right?”

when he’s about to cum, he turns into an absolute mess. He gets super whimpery and will hold you close to his chest as he dumps his load in you. He stays like that for a while, watching as his cum drips out of your cunt and down his dick.

He doesn’t let you get off his cock, partly because he’s so sensitive and partly because he secretly wants to stuff you full of his babies.

after he’s calmed down a bit, he’ll open his eyes and run a hand through his hair, letting out a small chuckle, “shit, baby, you keep fucking me like that and I might just have to put a ring around that finger.”

eren yeager

plays bass and is on vocals

he has a sleeve on one arm, and the other one is empty. It's pretty cohesive, and the pieces link together-think American traditional; he takes great pride in his tattoos. After all, they're pieces of art on his body.

He likes showing off on stage. He’ll take off his shirt and throw it into the crowd, and he loves hearing the screams that ensue afterwards.

Always the performer; he’ll walk off the stage and stand on the rails, getting the people in the crowd to run their hands down his sweat-slicked torso. It’s another crowd favourite.

he wears rings too, and his favourite thing to do is to get you to pull them off his fingers using your mouth. He has to coax you into each time, “I can’t pull them off by myself; they’re too tight, need your help, angel.” He just likes having you suck on his fingers; he won’t tell you that, though.

He likes the attention from the fans, but he mainly does it to get you hot and bothered. Eren stares at you while strangers are practically grabbing at him. It’s a game for him. Figure out just how many ways he can get to you.

you always avoid him after the shows, in a way to tell him that you're not impressed by the stunts he pulls.

As much as you try to run and hide, he always finds you. He’ll come up from behind, hands on your waist; you don’t need to see him to know that he’s got that Cheshire cat grin on his face.

Try to escape from his grip, and it’ll only get tighter, “what’d you think of my little performance, princess? Did it make you weak in the knees?”

He loves pushing your buttons, does everything to get a reaction out of you, try all you might, the night always ends the same way, you bent over his dressing room table, skirt lifted, panties to the side, and him fucking ruthlessly into you from behind.

the stoic front you put up would be practically erased from the way his cock slides in and out of your spongy walls, hitting that sweet spot over and over again.

He loves hearing you beg for him; he wants to listen to the vulgar words fall from your mouth, wants to have you begging him to let you cum, pleading for him to cum in your pussy.

He’ll tease you endlessly, “what’s that angel? If you want my cum so bad, you gotta beg better than that.” In the end, he always gives in, also liking the way his seed drips out of your pulsating hole.

Before any can drip down your thighs, he’ll slide back your panties, straighten out your skirt and send you off, saying that, “it’s for later, for when you try fingering that pretty little pussy, you’ll always have a reminder of who owns it.”

Bonus: tour manager! zeke yeager:

tour manager zeke, who watches the shows from the venue’s back, keeping his eyes trained on you.

Tour manager zeke who has a reputation for being a sleazebag, a cheapskate and vile to women.

Tour manager zeke, who watches as you stay back after each show to clean up, smiling ever so sweetly at him, “no mr. yeager, I really don’t mind helping out. It’s the least I can do.”

tour manager zeke, who can’t help think of shameful things when you bend over to pick up the crumpled posters, his eyes that linger a little too long at the swell of your pert ass.

Tour manager zeke thinks about how your mouth would feel around his cock, how your eyes would tear up as he pushed your head further and further down his cock. How pretty you would look with spit and cum coating that sweet face of yours.

Tour manager zeke, who has always been kind to you, offering to take you home for the night, telling you how cute you look and how he can’t believe you’re over 18.

Tour manager zeke wants to defile you and make you his, ruin you so that you can only get off from his cock and no one else’s.

Tour manager zeke wants to teach you how to suck dick, how to ride, how to fuck.

Tour manager zeke, who treats you so nicely, putting false notions in your mind so you can let your guard down around him, hoping that one day he can shape you into his plaything.

a/n: hope the smut sounded right this time around lmao, i might scrap it in the morning again idek yet, just wanted to see if i could even write smut.

I am working on the second part of somewhere only we know !! thank you for all the love on that.

if this does well, i'd love to do a part two to this with armin, mikasa and connie, please let me know if that is something you would be interested in !!

as always, if you enjoyed, leave a like/reblog, i truly appreciate it <33

[nev3rfound]

the other widow : b.b

natasha may have left what she once knew behind when she became an avenger, but there is still so much more to learn about her sister who escaped the red room with the help of a certain metal armed soldier. (3k)

masterlist / permanent taglist / etsy shop - requests open!

requested: yes! this has been a long awaited idea from @ateliefloresdaprimavera i hope you like it love :) warnings: mentions of violence, blood, nightmares. obviously, I haven't seen the black widow movie so this is just my interpretation!

(everything on my blog is my own writing. if it is shared on another page or website without being credited, it has not been approved to be shared by me. all rights reserved.)

In another life, things might've been different for you. Perhaps, you could have left your home country and followed many your age in their quest to find a better life in America or Europe. You might have met someone, a kind man who took care of you, who loved you deeply.

That would have been nice, in another lifetime. But it wasn't reality, at least, not yours.

Your reality was living in a world plagued by nightmares, of what was done to you for many years. It hurt to blink as you saw yourself, lying back on that table as Doctors crowded around you, muttering about the success of their work.

"No, she's still out there," Your ears perk up at the conversation behind you. The kitchen window remains open whilst you sit outside, tugging at the rose petals from the rose bush. It always was too pretty. Pretty things aren't designed to last for long.

Melina sighs heavily into her phone, glancing away from the window. "What do you expect me to do? She doesn't go anywhere." Disappointment laces her tone combined with the tiredness of her mind. She's been trying for months to encourage you to go out, further than the land you live on.

Faintly you can hear the other end of the conversation, Melina always had a habit of keeping her phone on speaker. "I might visit soon." That is all you managed to hear, but it was enough for you to drop the remainder of the rose and crush the petals beneath your feet.

"Oh good, you're awake." A pair of gloves snap against his wrists, causing you to flinch in your seat. "Now, Y/n, there's no point trying to struggle, you know what happened last time." Doctor Yeznik reminds you with a twisted smile, waiting for you to nod.

"They deserved it." You dare to mutter, only to hear Yeznik chuckle before he turns back to face you, gripping your face in his hand.

"And you deserve this." He seethes, stabbing a needle into your arm before you can fight back. "No one is coming to save you, Y/n, never forget that." Yeznik whispers, watching as your eyes begin to droop until you're unable to fight the urge to sleep.

Rising to your feet, you can feel a smile ghost your lips at the sight of a Blue Tit perching on the edge of the birdbath. One of his wings isn't quite right, and as you approach it, it remains perfectly still.

Holding your hands out, you ignore the scars from the restraints still marking your wrists and forearms. "I won't hurt you," You tell the bird as it dips its head into the water, shaking the excess off. "I can help you, little one." You add quietly, only to watch the bird retreat and fly away uneasily.

"There's always next time." Melina calls out from the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Yeah," You nod, lowering your arms and bury your hands into your pockets. "if it makes it through the night without being able to fly far."

Entering the kitchen, you pass Alexei in silence, despite him turning his head to speak up.

Once out of sight, Alexei averts his attention to Melina who simply shakes her head. "She's still working on recovering." Melina sighs, taking a seat opposite the broad man. "The, the red room got worse after Natasha escaped."

"You don't have to explain," Alexei waves her off, aware of you standing at the top of the stairs, listening in due to the creak of the floorboards. "it'll take time."

"I just don't know if that's something we have." Melina comments, passing a burner phone to Alexei with a text message on display.

Shifting in his seat, Alexei looks back at Melina before crushing the phone in his grasp. "We'll do what we can." He mutters before silence ensues and the pressure from the floorboard beneath your feet eases as you return to your needed solitude.

*

Opening your eyes, you knew something was off, something was different within the house.

Underneath your pillow, you grab ahold of your gun before traipsing out from your room which remains in permanent darkness.

As you exit your bedroom, light tries to seep through the gap in the door but you quietly close it, keeping the darkness concealed from the light.

Avoiding any creaking floorboards, you keep your gun aimed at all times before the faint sound of laughter catches your attention from downstairs. It was a rarity to hear anything joyous in the household, mostly arguments occurred or stories of fights Alexei shares that you can recite from memory if you were ever asked.

But this was different, something lighthearted shared for a brief moment before you turn the corner and hover by the kitchen doorway seeing all the seats taken at the table, Melina's now taken by a redhead.

"This is a surprise." You speak up, placing your gun on the counter, now catching everyone's attention.

Smiling to Yelena, Natasha quickly turns around in her chair, leaning her arm over the back. "Hey sis," She greets you, her accent replaced by an American version. "long time no see, huh?"

Everyone in the room remains still, waiting for you to make the first move like a scared animal. You'll either scarper or approach with caution, and even at that moment, you're unsure which route you'll take.

"What brings you back here?" You ask, crossing your arms over your chest as you remain standing, despite Alexei rising to his feet and offering you his chair.

"There's some unfinished business I have to deal with." Natasha states, and Yelena motions for you to come closer whilst Natasha has her back turned.

"And we're being dragged into it somehow?" You're quick to comment, remembering the last time it happened which resulted in your previous home being burnt to the ground and Natasha vanishing into thin air once more.

Rising to her feet, Natasha walks over to the doorway leading into the garden. She doesn't wait for you to follow, but she knows eventually you will.

"She means well, Y/n." Yelena tells you whilst playing with a knife, jabbing it against the table despite Melina swatting it away.

Humming to yourself, you force your feet forward until you're outside, listening to the peaceful presence of nature.

Whilst you're in your own world temporarily, Natasha can't help but take the opportunity to observe you, notice the changes since she last saw you. Melina explained the nightmares you've been having of late, how you wake up clawing at your own skin until it bleeds and you clutching onto a pillow, tearing into the cotton with ease as you sob.

You look visibly drained, that much Natasha can tell. She knew she should've brought you with her, away to America the last time she was here, but there wasn't enough time. She watched you from afar as the building fell into itself, devoured by the flames and you looking around for your sister, nowhere to be seen.

"There's a little blue tit who visits daily now," You begin to explain, opening your eyes as they remain trained on the empty birdbath. "he's got a damaged wing, can't fly very far but he always visits." Moving closer to the bath, you can see the reflection of other birds flying above in groups. One or two flies further back from the others, flapping their wings in desperation to not be left behind; something you know all too well.

As your hands rest on the birdbath, Natasha can see the scars across your skin clearly.

"Y/n, I never got a chance to apologise last time I was here," Natasha begins, stepping closer toward you, yet you seem oblivious to her words.

"And I hope at some point he'll let me help him, mend him back to his best so he can fly away." Your lips rise for a second at the thought before returning to a straight line, now allowing yourself to process Natasha's statement. "You don't need to apologise, Nat."

"But I do, Y/n." Natasha urges as she resists reaching out for your hand, knowing no one touches you anymore unless they dare risk a broken bone or two. "I should've found you in there and taken you with me. You were still a child, I,"

"I don't blame you, sister." Turning to face her, you force yourself to smile, an attempt to reassure her as she frowns deeply. "The only person I blame for everything is Yeznik." You can't help but shudder, hearing his voice in the back of your mind, one of the many who taunts you in your sleep.

"That's why I'm here." Natasha states.

You can't stop the scoff from leaving your lips. "You can't be serious, Natasha." Yet, you watch your sister nod immediately. "Do you want to get yourself killed?"

"I could ask you the same thing." She retorts, catching you off guard. "Don't think I don't know about the truth behind your escape, Y/n."

"What are you talking about?" You question, knowing better than to confess to your sister of all people. "I escaped that hell hole on my own. Killed several guards in the process and escaped with nine bullet wounds." You remind her, lifting your shirt to show the bullet wound scars that never properly healed.

"But you didn't escape from the Red Room. You escaped during a mission." She explains, watching your expression falter for half a second, but it was enough for her to know you're lying.

Shaking your head, you back away toward the small hutch hidden beneath an oak tree that currently houses three rabbits.

"That is preposterous, even for me, Natasha." You chuckle, opening the hutch and reach for the number one who happily hops out and stands beside you.

Looking away from you, Natasha can see the three others watching closely from the kitchen window. She can see Yelena mouthing something, but rolls her eyes when Natasha shakes her head.

"The Winter Soldier." Yelena marches over, causing you to tense up and the rabbit hops back into the hutch as you gently lock it once more. "Remember him, Y/n?"

"His name is Bucky." You mutter under your breath before slowly standing up. "And don't you dare talk about him." You spit at Yelena who spares Natasha a look.

"You helped each other escape, didn't you?" Natasha pushes her question, and this time to her surprise you don't object.

"Follow me," You sigh, walking around the garden to a set of stairs, leading you to the rooftop filled with trees and plants.

Admiring the greenery, Natasha hesitantly follows behind you.

"You going to stand there all day or sit down?" Raising a brow to Natasha, she breathes out a laugh and sits down on one of the seats dotted around that isn't taken by a plant.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Natasha leans forward, resting her forearms on her thighs and you mirror her action.

"Yes." You mutter. "But I can't remember everything it, part of it I blocked out." You admit, feeling your leg already beginning to shake beneath you.

"You will be accompanied this time, Y/n." Your tutor, Ms Ivanov tugs on your ponytail forcefully whilst you remain seated.

"I don't need company." Tugging your head forward, her fingers fall through the ends of your hair and she hums in response. "I'm capable of this myself."

Ms Ivanov chuckles under her breath before standing in front of your desk, resting her hands on the sides as her eyes fixate on yours. "That might be so, but not this time." Pushing her hands from your desk, Ivanov nods to the closed door.

Within seconds someone is forced through the metal frame with a bag covering their face. They're of a large build, but your eyes widen at the sight of metal making up their left arm.

"Is it?" Your question leaves your lips before you've fully thought about what this means, and Ivanov smirks.

Stepping toward the concealed figure, she tugs the sheet from their face, revealing a mass of brown hair.

He lifts his head up and stares at you immediately those pensive blue eyes you've heard whispers of. He fights against his restraints as two guards stand behind him with loaded guns.

"There will be plenty of time for that, soldat." Ivanov laughs, patting his metal arm. "Now, Y/n. It's time to go."

*

"I don't know what happened on that mission. But when I woke up, I, I was free." Unable to look at your sister, your focus lies on the breeze weaving through the branches of the trees.

Natasha leans forward, wishing she could tell you everything she knew. "You saved each other, Y/n." She speaks up, remembering the last time she saw him, a broken shell of the man he once was, his demeanour mirroring yours.

"I guess," You shrug. "but after everything, I, I have no idea what happened to him. I, I don't even know if he's still," Pursing your lips, the word never leaves as you curl your arms toward your stomach.

Looking toward the others, Natasha sighs at their disapproving glares. She knows they mean well, that they are practically family. But you're the only true blood family Natasha has left, and she can't lie to you anymore, not this time.

Standing in Wakanda, Bucky smiled truly for the first time in years. He was no longer plagued by the fear of becoming the Winter Soldier. He was finally free of it all.

But he still had a long way to go, to make amends for those he hurt, and amongst everyone, there was you. His Black Widow, Y/n.

"Hey, Barnes." Natasha stands beside him, looking out at the vast farmland that surrounds them. She can't help but think how much you would love to be somewhere like this, somewhere that is peaceful, tranquil.

"Hello, Natasha." Bucky turns to face the redhead, having not spoken to her since he was under Zemo's control. "I erm, I would like to apologise for everything I did, and for hurting you all those years ago." Bucky explains, and Natasha patiently listens, allowing him to get his full speech out. "And for what they made me do in," Furrowing his brows together, Natasha clears her throat.

"We don't have to talk about that." She tells him as she reaches into her pocket, taking out a folded piece of paper, well worn. "I wanted to ask you something before anyone knows where I am."

"Okay?" Bucky answers uneasily, tugging on the cloth that covers the remainder of his left shoulder.

Unfolding the piece of paper, Bucky can see a glimpse of a black and white photo.

"Here," Natasha holds the photograph out, face down to Bucky who hesitantly accepts. She watches intently as he turns the photograph over and can't help but smile as his breath hitches in his throat.

"Y/n." Bucky looks up to Natasha who simply nods.

"I was wondering if you'd remember her." Natasha crosses her arms over her chest, trying to hide the smirk forming on her face and amusement in her tone.

A playful scoff leaves Bucky's lips. "How could I forget her?" He thinks aloud. "I could never forget the person who helped me escape, who, who," 'Helped me realise I'm still human despite everything I've done.' Bucky thinks to himself, remembering the night before he left you as you lay in his arms whilst he listened to your soft reassurances. "Do you know where she is?" He tries to hide the hope in his voice, but it's useless.

"Yes." Natasha answers. "Y/n Romanoff." She states, and Bucky stares blankly at Natasha for a moment, before a light laugh leaves his lips.

"I shoulda known." He sighs dramatically. "Makes a lot of sense now." Bucky mutters, but Natasha doesn't pry. "Is, is she with you?" He glances past her, toward the jet she came on, but Natasha shakes her head.

"She's safe, in Russia." Natasha explains as she walks alongside Bucky toward the lake. "But she prefers the company of animals over people these days."

"Makes two of us then." Bucky comments. "I, I promised I'd find her." Allowing his mind to drift as the lake ripples, Bucky pictures your sleeping form in his arms minutes before he left you. He whispered you a promise, one he has yet to fulfil.

"Then let me help you keep that promise." Natasha places her hand on his arm gently, and Bucky snaps out from his thoughts. "I know you're still healing, and she is too. But I'll come back, Barnes."

Bucky nods. "Thank you, Natasha."

"James Barnes," Natasha slowly interrupts your prolonged silence. "is still alive, he, he's healing, but he remembers you, Y/n."

You reach out and take Natasha's hand in yours. For a moment, you simply stare, void of emotion before tightening your grip, beginning to crush her fingers whilst Natasha remains stoic.

"Don't lie to me, Nat." You tell her, keeping your eyes locked on hers.

"I'm not lying, Y/n." She responds, ignoring the pain you're inflicting before your grip begins to ease, but she doesn't pull away immediately. "He made you a promise, didn't he?"

"I, I don't know." You admit sadly, looking down at your lap, faintly hearing his voice in the back of your mind fighting through the horrid memories engrained there from the red room.

"He did, Y/n." Natasha asserts herself. "Would you like to see him?"

"I think so." You answer honestly as you uncurl your body and sit upright. "But only once this is over. Once Yeznik is gone. I don't want to be haunted anymore, Nat."

This time, Natasha extends her hand, taking yours in hers delicately.

"Okay, sis." She breathes out, helping you to your feet. "Let's get started."

t a g l i s t (thank you for the support!) link in my bio and at the top of this piece to add yourself☺️(if your user isn’t tagged, it’s because nothing comes up sorry!)@bissstuff @psychicforest@lourightm@mywinterwolf@justsomedreaming @stanlux17 @smokeandnailz @supermoonchildbroski @xrosegoldwolfx@courtneychicken@marvelsangels@supraveng@tommy-lee-81@smilexcaptainx@fandom-princess-forevermore@sarge-barnes-sir@pleasantlysecretdream @decaffeinated-fangirl @howdyherron @kirby-boo @florencxs@eldahae @handmesomecoffee @hi-my-name-is-riley @dev1lbella @thanossexual @alissaginger @sambucky8@notbrooklynsblog @nikkixostan @cosmiccaptian @adoreyou976@sarcasticallywitty15 @multi-fandom-princess07 @16boyfriends-and-me @courtneychicken @mackevanstan80 @torchwoodoctor @pleasantlysecretdream @yougottalovefandoms @magicalxdaydream@soccer-100000 @tenaciousperfectionunkown @talksoprettyjjx @btsonthedaily @jessyballet @katiaw2 @buckyswildflower@lucrea @weenersoldierr @katiaw2 @lucrea @amelia-song-pond @bluelakeee @dottirose @emilytheukuleleplayer @5-seconds-of-mendes @rudystilins  @bookfrog242@wild-rose-35@fleurlovesbucky@iiclarixa @soldierstucky@twinerd14@lieswithoutfairytales@ateliefloresdaprimavera@teenwonder@weenersoldierr@nobody-will @ilikemypolarbear @rottenstyx @original-in-itself @sebby-staan @bbl32 @lyoongx @iilwjbb @siriuslyslytherin @chazubagi @youngmarveltastypersona @iamninaannaisreading @marry-me-calum-hood @original-in-itself @clownerlyluv @emilyprentisslittlewhore @amelia-song-pond @buckleyx @jesuswasnotawhiteman

[justthehiddleswrites]

It’s Just a Pumpkin | Adam x Charlie

A/N: I finally finished something.  A miracle.  So this takes place a few months after Bleeding Hearts. 

Pairing: Adam (OLLA) x Charlie Bock (OC)

Summary: Charlie is excited for the spooky season and can’t understand why Adam is so against it.

Warnings: mentions of past trauma (night terrors), most fluff, light angst

Adam and Charlie Masterlist

Thank you for reading and enjoying my stories and work.  

--

“No.”

“But it is just…”

“Charlie, no.” His voice growing more terse.

“They were on sale at the Farmer’s Market. I was going to make pie later on.”

Adam stood up and walked to the doorway connecting the kitchen to the living room. His robe open and he hadn’t bothered with pajama bottoms that morning. “I can smell them, Charlie. Those are not pumpkins for eating. They’re pumpkins for….” His lips curled up into a sneer. “…carving.”

Charlie’s chin dropped towards her chest, her brown curls sadly bouncing. “I didn’t think you could tell the difference.” 

Adam rolled his eyes, but only because her head faced the floor. “Well, it’s another note to add to your Adam notebook.” He stood there, watching her. Charlie’s eyes staring at the swirls of dirt and dust obscuring the pattern of the worn linoleum of their shared kitchen. His resolve and anger quickly melting away.

“I’ll give them away at the hospital on my next shift.” she commented, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. “I’m sure they can go to someone who gets to celebrate the holidays.” She shook her head from side to side as she spat out the words. 

Of everything they had ever argued about, and at this point Adam had lost count of the number of things, nothing had left a sore spot with Charlie as much as Adam’s utter and bitter hatred for Halloween. 

“It’s a bastardization of All Hallows Eve in order for the capitalist machine called the American economy to eek out more money for the consumers.” he countered the first time they argued over it. Back in July, when Charlie first brought up the idea of decorating.

“So what?! Maybe I don’t mind that! Maybe I enjoy the one day of the year where I got to pretend to be someone else?! Anyone else besides who I was. It was a night of escape and fantasy, Adam. Of magic.” She plopped down in the chair not too far from him that evening. “Why can’t I have that?” He sighed, holding his head in his hands. Something Adam found himself doing on a more and more frequent basis since he met Charlie. “Because you don’t need it anymore.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT I NEED?!” Charlie yelled, only to regret it as Adam stood and walked into the bedroom, taking his beloved Gibson with him, without another word. She quietly slipped into bed that night and Adam pulled her close against him without another word.

Now every time she even mentioned “October” or the “holiday season”, he would leave the room, sometimes slamming doors, but usually not. Charlie did her best to chalk it up to Adam’s “moodiness”, his demeanor. But she knew it was something else. And she didn’t dare ask. 

She sighed. “They will be gone by tomorrow, Adam. And until then, I will put them outside, okay?”

He gave a brief nod. Charlie walked towards him and gave his lips a peck. “Now, when is the last time you had a hot meal?” She pulled him towards the couch with a laugh.

-

Charlie snored softly next to Adam as he slipped out of the covers and made his way to the spare bedroom. He sat at the end of the bed, balancing Charlie’s laptop on his knees, while he logged onto Zoom. A familiar face popped onto the screen after he spent about twenty minutes fiddling and curing. 

“Adam.” Simone’s pleasant tone rang out. “It’s been too long since we spoke. Is everything okay with Charlie? The nightmares?”

Adam frowned. “About twice a month, unless she pulls double shifts at the hospital and then every night until she gets proper sleep. I believe you call it ‘self-care’.” He rolled his eyes at the last bit. “I didn’t exactly coin the term, Adam.” Her lips pulled into a thin smile. “This isn’t about Charlie. At least not entirely, is it?”

“No.”

He watched as Simone pulled out a calendar and flipped the page. “Oh, I see.” Her shoulders slumped, and she takes a deep breath. “Adam, sometimes a pumpkin is just a pumpkin.”

He nodded, his face twisting in pain. “I know that, but…” his voice trailed off and he looked away.

Simone tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “Tell me about your first Samhain together.”

Adam’s head snapped towards the screen, his eyes flashed for a moment and then he slumped to his side. “It was about four months after we met…”

-

Charlie woke up the next evening to find Adam gone. She checked the spare bedroom and then the living room. She heard something hit the kitchen table and she walked in to find Adam’s back hunched as he worked on something. A smile creeped over her face.  “Are you tinkering with the microwave again, darling? Because I don’t want to have to buy…” She walked in front of him and stopped speaking as he set down the kitchen knife.

Adam spun the pumpkin around to reveal a crude jack-o’-lantern face carved into the pumpkin. He twisted his hands on top of the table. “My artistic talents lie elsewhere.” He responded softly.

Charlie smiled as she sat down and took his hand, squeezing it. “You didn’t have to do this. I was willing to—”

“—Halloween reminds me of Eve.” he blurted out. “Particularly jack-o’-lanterns. And pumpkins.” 

She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

He ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Don’t be. I should have told you, instead of ignoring it.”  He exhaled sharply. 

Charlie smirked at him. “Perhaps you could tell me about it and we could incorporate some of it around the house?” She raised a brow. “Unless Simone already suggested that.”

Adam’s eyes grew wide. “How did you…?”

“You never say you are ignoring your feelings, you just say you don’t have them.” She stood and went to make her evening coffee. “Have you eaten?” Her hand poised on the freezer door handle.

“Not yet, I was busy ensuring I didn’t chop off a finger.” He moved to grab a cordial glass from the cabinet.

Charlie took his hands and counted all ten fingers. “All accounted for.” She laced her fingers with his, pulling him close, wrapping her arms around him. “Love you.”

He leaned down and inhaled Charlie’s scent, her bay rum soap still lingering from her shower the night before. “I love you more.” 

[havin-a-wee]

Stars Align

pairing: harry styles x y/n

warnings: fluff, ig you could consider it angst but its really just mysterious

word count: 2k

hello! i apologize for kind of disappearing, my fic rec account has kind of blown up and ive been super busy with that.

this is my entry for @sweetlygolden 's Harry On Holiday Challenge! i chose strangers in the same city, and the line prompt “That is the worst sunburn I’ve ever seen.” i honestly already have a part 2 planned out but we'll see how it goes!

“How much longer are you going to stare at that pretending like it’s interesting.”

Her soft voice surprised him, and he whipped his head around to see who had been speaking to him.

For the first time in a while, Harry was able to get away for a little. Of course, he travels a lot for work, but this was the first vacation since he can remember where he was alone, doing whatever he pleases. He chose Italy for this special occasion, because it’s always been one of his favorite places, and he missed the freedom of wandering around the boot shaped country without a care in the world.

The day's adventures had brought him to La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, which is a museum that he's been wanting to see for quite some time. He started the day off by getting a cappuccino and a crespelle from a wonderful little cafe down the street from his hotel.

Right afterwards he walked to the museum, taking in the sights around him on the 20 minute trek to his destination. Before the woman behind him snatched his attention, he was staring at a painting of an abstract house. The house was only painted in blue, and the artist had used the different shades and tones of the color to create the details in the painting.

He had been staring at it for a good amount of time, which he assumed is what prompted the stranger to talk to him.

It’s his 3rd day on the trip, leaving him 4 more until he has to be back in L.A. for work. He has no plans, no schedules, no job to do. It’s just him and the world. At least, that’s what he assumed it would be. The vacation is supposed to be a solo one, however, he’s currently staring at a stranger that decided to speak to him. And for some reason, he is drawn to her. Compelled to spend time with her after just a simple sentence was spoken between the two of them.

When he fully turns around she jumped, a bit startled by his bright red complexion. “That is the worst sunburn I have ever seen!”

It was true, Harry had managed to get himself a nasty burn on the first day in Italy. He usually tans instead of getting a sunburn, but when you’re used to the dreary weather of the UK, it can be hard to forget how strong the sun is in other places.

So he had laid out on the beach and fell asleep, waking up a few hours later with tomato red skin and a burning sensation covering the exposed skin.

“That’s what happens when y’fall asleep on a beach in Rome,” he chuckled, smiling awkwardly at the woman before him.

She’s beautiful, there is absolutely no denying that. She was wearing a simple spaghetti-strap black dress that cut off right at the knee. There were no designs, no embellishments, just a black dress that hugged her figure perfectly. Her lips have a deep red lipstick smeared across them, and he couldn’t help but notice how the color complimented her skin tone. Her simple black pumps completed the outfit, and her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, with a few of the front strands falling out of the hair tie and framing her face.

“I’d assume so.” Her demeanor is serious, even though there's a smile on her face. She’s…..intimidating?

Harry hasn’t been intimidated by anything since he was a teenager. Once you perform in front of thousands of screaming people, who also happen to idolize you, things don’t tend to phase a person anymore.

But for some reason, her presence caused butterflies to fly around in his stomach, a feeling he hasn’t felt in a long time. He actually enjoyed the feeling, it reminded him of when everything was normal.

What also reminded him of normality was the fact that she seems to not have the slightest clue of who he is. If she does, she’s sure as hell good at hiding it.

“You’ve been looking at the same painting for 10 minutes, just wanted to make sure you hadn’t fallen asleep.” A small laugh escaped her lips, and the noise agitated the fluttering butterflies residing in his tummy. Her voice is mesmerizing, and she sounds like what Harry imagines an angel to sound like. She has an American accent, and it eased his nerves slightly that she was also a tourist.

He turned back to the painting to look at it, but it was also convenient in that she wouldn’t be able to see his undoubtedly flushed cheeks.

“Yeah m’not sure what it is ‘bout it but there’s somethin’ special with this one.”

“That’s Prismi lunari by Fortunato Depero, he was very talented.” Harry spun around once again to face her, shocked at her knowledge of the random artwork.

“You know that off of the top of your head?” He tilts his head and looks at her, furrowing his brows in confusion. He’s pretty sure there was no label for the painting, and if there was it was way too small for her to see from where she’s standing.

“I know a lot of things.”

The statement was simple, but Harry wondered if her words paired with the smirk on her face are code for something else. “How long have you been here?” Her question snapped him out of his thoughts, and he looked up at her and smiled. He flicks his wrist and directs his attention to it, reading the Gucci watch adorning his wrist.

“Well I got here at 11, so about 5 hours.” It honestly surprised him when he realized it was 4 o’clock, but he knows how wrapped up he gets in artwork so he must have lost track of time.

“Jesus christ! I can barely stand to walk around a museum for an hour!” She blows out a puff of air, mocking being out of breath. They both laugh at her comment, Harry laughing a bit harder than her. “What’s your name?”

“Oh! M’Harry, s’nice to meet you.” He stuck out his ring-clad hand, and her delicate fingers wrapped around his as she shook it.

“Well Harry, wanna get out of here and walk around with someone who knows the city?” She points at herself, and the small smile she gave him earlier transformed into a silly grin.

“Well m’not sure how well an American can know the city, but I’ll bite.” Usually he would never do this. Going off with strangers is never a good idea, especially because of his status. But there’s something about the girl that makes Harry feel safe. They had just met yet he feels like he could trust her with things he hasn’t even told his best friends.

“An American who’s been living here for a year, that is.” His eyebrows raise slightly, intrigued by her new admission. But before he can even open his mouth to speak, she grabs his wrist with her daintily manicured hand and whisks him out of the quiet museum.

The air was humid, quickly drawing beads of sweat from his forehead. He’s also quite baffled at how she was completely unphased. Not a single drop of sweat was dripping on her body, her soft skin untouched like an old porcelain doll, preserved for years in perfect condition.

“I’ll show you around a little, we can go to this wonderful little vintage store I know.” She had turned to face him, her hand moving from his wrist to cup his one hand in both of hers. “Um- at least, if you want to.” For the first time, she was nervous. Although she will never admit it, Harry makes her extremely nervous. Extremely.

When he turned around when they first met, her jump of surprise wasn’t just because of his bright sunburn. In fact, it wasn’t about that at all. It was about how fucking attractive he is. He really looks like one of the statues that was put up in the museum. His sparkling green eyes send a shiver down her spine, and the tattoos peaking through his thin white t-shirt cause a fire to build in her stomach.

Having someone to talk too while he traversed the streets of Rome is a lot more enjoyable than Harry had anticipated. He purposefully told all of his friends that he was going to be MIA while on this trip. But the fact that she is a stranger changes it in some way, in a good way.

The cobblestone streets are surprisingly smooth, and they walk next to each other in a comfortable silence for a long amount of time. The silence would only break when she would point out something in their field of vision. At one point, Harry pauses, standing still in the middle of the street with a thinking look on his face. He realizes that he doesn’t know her name, which seems ridiculous to him because they were walking around a foreign country like the best of friends. She turns to him, matching his confused look when they lock eyes. “I just realized I don’t know y’name.”

Instead of reacting like he would expect one to react when asked that question, her pupils dilated and for some reason she appears to be scared. Why would someone be scared when you ask for their name?

‘Maybe she thinks her name is embarrassing’ Harry thought, still looking at her with a confused look, but now it was laced with a bit of suspicion.

He watches her sigh, and her hand went up to her ponytail and pulled the black elastic out, her soft hair cascading down her shoulders. With another sigh she said, “Y/N. My names Y/N.”

“That’s a really beautiful name.”

“Oh! There’s the store!”

He found it odd that she was so eager to switch the subject, but goes along with it nonetheless.

The vintage store is lovely, and Harry was able to find a beautiful ring and necklace set, matching gold roses on both of them. They looked around the shop for about 15 minutes, Harry being the only one to make a purchase.

The sun had set by the time they went outside, which isn’t surprising considering that it was almost dark when they walked into the little shop. They stood, facing each other outside of this small little shop in Rome. Two strangers, who just happened to cross each other's path. Harry knows this won’t last forever, and he also knows that he wants to see her again. In a leap of faith, he pulls the gold necklace out of the small brown bag and looks up at her.

“Here, I got them so we could match.” It was bold, but Harry feels connected to this girl, and he doesn’t know it, but she feels the exact same. The smile she gave him when he handed her the necklace was bright and genuine, the creases next to her eyes proving its authenticity. He motioned for her to turn around, wrapping the necklace around her neck and clasping it while she held up her hair.

“Thank you Harry. This is the best day I’ve had in a while.”

“Likewise.”

“I hate to do this, but I have to go. Have a wonderful rest of your trip Harry.”

It was then that she placed a small, tender peck on his lips, barely lingering for a second before pulling away.

“Wait! Can I get y’number?” Her smile slanted into a smirk, and she pulled a small card and a pen out of her small black clutch. She placed the card up against the brick wall, leaning it against it and scribbling something down on the paper. When she finished writing, she pressed her lips against the card, handing it to Harry.

He looked down at it, expecting to see a series of numbers, but he was met with a simple note, scribbled on the piece of cardstock next to the red lip print she had left.

May the stars align in our favor once again. - Y/N

He looked up frantically, planning to ask her to write her number down as well, but he was met with nothing.

She had disappeared into the night, leaving as quickly as she appeared earlier that day.

[incorrectbandofbrothersquotes]

Dear Heart - CH 12

Dick Winters x Melanie Davis

Summary: Melanie Davis is a nurse from North Carolina who has lived a sheltered life since her father died. Her father’s best friend, Colonel Sink, invites her to experience more as a regimental nurse for the 506th PIR of the 101st Airborne. She embarks on the adventure of a lifetime.

Tag list: @thoughpoppiesblow​​​​​​ @primusk​​ @itswormtrain​​​ @hesbuckcompton-baby​ If you’d like to be added, let me know!

Word Count: 5k (another doozy but omg a lot has to happen okay? they have to talk, Dick has to be a simp, it’s important to the plot)

A/N: Thank you again to @mercurygray​​​​ for being a wonderful beta reader, as always <3

Warning(s): Descriptions of an assault

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3  Chapter 4  Chapter 5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7  Chapter 8  Chapter 9  Chapter 10  Chapter 11

Chapter 12 here we go!!

A warm spring began in Germany, welcoming the American invaders with its beautiful scenery and pleasant weather. Melanie wondered how people who lived in such a lovely place could have begun a war that was so terrible. The regiment came to a long stop in a town called Sturzelberg, where there was a hospital, and Melanie finally felt like a regular nurse again. She even got to change out of her OD’s and into her nursing uniform dress. It was wrinkled from the journey in her bag, rolled up at the bottom until she could wear it again. It was somewhat of a homecoming, though it seemed a different girl stepped into it. Not even a girl at all, really. A grown woman. A changed woman. 

Her and Juliet’s billet had a mirror, so she took the opportunity to really look at herself for the first time in weeks. Though she was clean, she looked tired. She didn’t have much color to her face, and she had lost more weight. She frowned at her reflection, hearing her mother loud and clear in her mind. To her surprise, she voiced what she heard. 

“Thin and pale,” she murmured. “That won’t do.”

Juliet looked up from her notebook. “I beg your pardon?” 

Melanie did not reply. She was too busy pinching her cheeks along the bone, giving them a semblance of rosiness. It was an old trick, but a useful one. So was chewing one’s lips to make them red if one didn’t have any rouge, which was her next task.

“Mel, what the bloody hell are you doing?” Juliet demanded, getting to her feet. 

“Making myself somewhat presentable,” Melanie answered. “Now that we’re back in relative comfort, I’ve got no excuse for walking around looking like a rag doll.” 

Juliet scoffed in disbelief. Then she stood in front of Melanie, took her by the shoulders, and looked into her eyes, searching. 

“What are you doing?” Melanie asked. 

“I’m looking for Melanie Davis, I hope she’s still in there,” Juliet returned. 

It occurred to Melanie that Juliet had only known the exhausted, wounded Melanie from weeks at war and no sleep. Already a little jaded from the amount of wounded who passed through. Of course she didn’t recognize the Melanie from before - who lived with constant reminders of femininity and vanity she’d had ingrained in her since childhood. 

She rolled her eyes and dislodged herself from Juliet’s grip. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s me.” 

“You’ve been through hell on Earth,” Juliet pointed out. “Who cares what you look like?”

Melanie hadn’t thought of it that way. And she had certainly not had many experiences of criticism being met with compassion. She didn’t always feel she deserved compassion - she was happy to give it to others but for herself? Perfection only. It was hitting her now what an impossible standard she was holding herself to. 

“Oh, I must sound awfully vain,” Melanie sighed. “I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it if I prefer feeling feminine. I can’t believe how much I took for granted just having lipstick or nail polish.” 

“Obviously, you can enjoy those things, but I cannot stand by and let you say that you ‘won’t do,’” Juliet replied. “You’re a beautiful woman, with or without lipstick.” 

Melanie looked at the floor and fixed her clothes. “That’s very kind of you, thank you.”

She was unused to getting such compliments. Her mother had always fixated on Melanie’s looks, though she had never been insulting. It was always reassurance that she was pretty enough to “catch a husband.” But, as she had pointed out to herself, there was more to the world than all that. The war was still on. She had a job to do. 

“Alright, I’m off to work,” she said. “It feels mighty fine to be saying that again.” 

She forced herself to smile, putting all thoughts of her appearance behind her. She just needed to get back to a hospital and work with patients so she could start feeling like herself again. Juliet wished her luck, and then Melanie was off. 

***

As they made their way deeper into Germany, Dick’s inner conflict deepened, too. Melanie’s condition, her moods and general demeanor, seemed to improve, while Lew seemed to get steadily worse. The day of the jump (which he was still a bit bitter to have missed, despite its outcome), when Dick had to tell his best friend about his demotion, he was disturbed by Nix’s non-reaction, followed by flippant remarks to disguise a frustration he clearly would not voice. Dick sought out the only person he felt he could talk to about his concerns - Melanie. 

He went first to her billet. The day was drawing to a close, so he assumed she would be back by now from the hospital. Juliet opened the door and looked surprised to see him.

“Oh! Hello, Major,” she said. 

“Is Melanie here?” he asked, getting right to the point. 

“No, she hasn’t come back from the hospital yet,” she told him. “Is everything alright? Did you have something...important to tell her?” 

She raised a knowing eyebrow at him and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. At this point, he wasn’t sure who was more invested in his relationship with Melanie - Nix or Juliet. He wondered what might have happened if she had been around to help orchestrate the Paris trip. For now, he let it slide.  

“I just want to talk to her,” he said. “Thanks, though.” 

“Worth a shot,” she said under her breath. “Well, let me know if we need to send out a search party.” 

“Will do,” he said, amused. “See you later.”

She nodded in return and closed the door. Dick headed to the hospital. He looked forward to seeing Melanie - he always did. He just wished his friends would see that, and realize it was enough for now. There was enough understanding between them that they were pretty well aware of what they felt for each other. At least, Dick was sure he understood. But there was still a war, and that wasn’t really the place for romance. 

By the time he arrived at the hospital, he had pushed his frustrations with his friends to the back of his mind. In the first ward, he found Melanie, in a chair beside a patient’s bed, a deck of cards between them on a tray, and laughter on her face. The patient pulled a card from his hand and laid it down, which made Melanie’s jaw drop. 

“Another red three?” she gasped. “I think it’s very clear how this game is going to end.” 

“You’ve still got a chance, Miss Melanie,” he replied through a thick Southern accent. “One good hand and you could turn this whole thing around.” 

“Well, lucky for you, my hand isn’t anything to write home about,” she returned, frowning at it. “Draw your cards, Sergeant.”

He reached for the deck and picked up three cards, adding them to his hand. Dick watched the game play out for a moment - the sergeant discarded, Melanie drew two, then she discarded, and the sergeant drew again. All the while, Melanie talked to the man. He was missing his right leg up to the thigh - and a fleeting image of Bill Guarnere and Joe Toye passed through Dick’s mind. But judging by this soldier’s attitude, no one would have guessed anything was the matter with him. The way he smiled and chuckled at Melanie’s praise, he didn’t seem to notice that he was even in a hospital bed. 

Dick’s heart was warmed by the sight. Melanie really was back to her old self. She was off duty, and yet she sat with a man she didn’t know to bring him some small comfort. A simple card game. A chance for him to feel normal again, even for a few moments. Dick wasn’t sure which he admired more - her selflessness or how happy she looked to be where she was. The grin on her face gave away that she considered it no trouble to play a game with a patient when her rounds were over. She was genuinely glad to do it. Dick hoped Toye and Guarnere had similarly wonderful nurses wherever they were. 

“A canasta already?” she cried as Dick approached. “If you go out on me with all this in my hand, Sergeant, I’ll be finished for sure!”

She discarded and then finally, she looked up. She caught Dick’s eye as he took some tentative steps toward her, hesitant to interrupt. But she beamed at him, so he assumed he was welcome. 

“Good evening, Dick,” she said kindly. 

The sergeant turned and saw Dick, so he offered a quick salute. “Good evening, sir,” 

“Good evening,” Dick returned politely. “Sorry to interrupt.” 

“Not at all,” Melanie assured him. “Dick, this is Sergeant Samson - the finest canasta player in the US Army. Sergeant, this is Major Winters.” The two men shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Then she met Dick’s gaze again. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he said, and found himself regretting coming at all. She was busy, and he felt foolish for disrupting her moment of joy. “I can come back later, though -” 

“Actually, sir, I’m about ready for some sleep if Miss Melanie will let me off the hook,” Samson said. 

She cast him a playful look. “I see how you operate, Samson. Quit while you’re ahead, that way you don’t lose.”

He laughed, a bit bashful at her teasing, but she collected the cards all the same, and set them aside. 

“We’ll play again tomorrow if you like,” she offered.

“Of course,” he returned. “That is, if you enjoy losing that much!” 

She feigned offense while he chuckled some more. Then she fluffed his pillows and pulled the blankets up to his chest. Dick watched and felt a familiar stir in his heart of affection for her. She was the most beautiful person he had ever had the pleasure of knowing - and that did not just apply to her pretty face. Melanie was a sweet soul, a nurturing heart, and a bright mind. She was a high quality person. And tiny moments like this showed that to him more than anything. 

“Can I get you anything else before I go?” she offered Samson. 

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” 

“Good night, Sergeant,” she said. 

“Good night, ma’am, sir.” 

Dick nodded in acknowledgement before offering Melanie his arm, which she took, and they left the ward together. It struck him that her touch no longer made him so nervous. It thrilled him - even after knowing each other for years - but it was comfortable now. As if the crook of his arm was made for her hand. It was natural. 

“Is everything alright, Dick?” she asked as they stepped outside. “You seem troubled.”

He didn’t consider himself a particularly emotive person, but Melanie never failed to pick up on what he was feeling. Especially when he needed her. 

“It’s Nix,” he said. “His drinking...it’s become such a problem up at regiment that he was demoted today. When I told him that, he didn’t even seem to care.”

Melanie’s brows furrowed and she looked thoughtfully ahead. “I’m sorry to hear that. Lewis is a good man and a fine officer. I would have thought he’d be more invested.” 

“Well, in his defense, he’d just come back from that disaster of a jump,” Dick said. 

“What disaster of a jump?” she wondered. 

He told her what Nix had relayed to him - that the troopers didn’t even make it out of the plane. The CO was killed. Nix and just a handful of others survived out of sheer luck. 

“Oh, how awful,” she said, heartbroken.

 There really could be no moment between them where the war did not rear its ugly head, Dick thought bitterly. No matter what, there was some news of tragedy. Death sank its teeth into even a simple evening stroll. He decided to steer the conversation back to its original subject. 

“Seeing Lew like this just has me worried,” he said. “I feel like he’s close to spiraling, and I don’t have a clue what to do. I thought it was just a bad habit, but now...” he trailed off, unsure what to call his friend’s profound issue. 

“I’m afraid there isn’t much you can do,” Melanie told him. “Nix is...troubled, and he has his coping mechanism. Unless he wants to quit drinking, there’s nothing you - or anybody - can do to stop him from picking that bottle up again.”

Once again, he was being told to do nothing - frustrating and impossible advice. He had hoped for more from her. 

“What you can do,” she went on, and he felt a glimmer of hope again. “Is make yourself available to him. Let him know - subtly, of course - that you’re ready if and when he’ll need you. Eventually, it will come to a head, and he’ll need people in his corner that he can truly rely on.” 

“It still sounds like doing nothing,” he said, defeated. 

“I know you’re a man of action, Dick, but this will take patience,” she returned, understanding. 

He didn’t answer right away, still a bit frustrated. He also took a moment to look at her. The dim twilight was flattering on her skin. A cool breeze made her flyaway hairs stir around her head. She looked a bit like a painting with the Bavarian backdrop behind her. It struck him again how much he loved her. She met his gaze. 

“Dick?” 

He shook his head to clear it, though appreciating her beauty had eased some of his irritation about Nix. 

“Sorry,” he said. “You look nice tonight, that’s all.” 

“Thank you,” she said, blushing lightly. “I’m feeling much better now that we’ve got more food and I’m back in a hospital.” 

He had noticed her improvement over the past few days. Her cheeks were rounding out again, and she didn’t look so tired. Her bruises were gone, too. 

“I feel a bit silly,” she admitted. “I was fussing over how I looked when we first got here because I didn’t have lipstick or nail polish. What a ridiculous thing to worry about.” 

Melanie always looked natural, so he tried to remember the last time he saw her looking nicer than usual. It was Paris. Which was beginning to feel decades in the past instead of just months.

“It’s not ridiculous,” he assured her. “Silly, I’ll give you, but ridiculous is a strong word.” 

“Alright, silly it is then,” she teased back with a smile, and he ached at how much he adored it. 

They reached her billet, stopped outside the door, and faced each other. 

“This takes me back,” she said. “All the way to Aldbourne.” 

He nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I don’t think I’d recognize those two kids.” 

“Me neither,” she chuckled. “So much has happened. But, I…” 

He looked expectantly at her as she trailed off and gathered her thoughts. Her brow furrowed, which told him she was searching for the right words. 

“I am so grateful we’re still friends,” she said. “If it weren’t for you, I don’t think I could have made it this far.”

It was his turn to get flustered. For a moment, he stood there silently, a bit lost for words. It was such an honest and wonderful thing to say. How could he return that sentiment?

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m grateful too, Mel,” he said, feeling the understatement like an itch on his skin. “Really.” 

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, smiling. “On that pleasant note, shall we say goodnight? Unless there’s anything else?”

He shook his head. “Thanks for listening. As always.” 

They said goodnight, and she went inside, no doubt to chat to Juliet before climbing into bed and settling in. Dick wanted only for Melanie to be safe and comfortable, especially after everything she’d been through. He hoped that after the war, she could end her days in his arms instead of alone, he could tell her plainly how much she meant to him, and that he could be her true refuge. Until then, his mind went to lipstick and nail polish…

The following day, on his way to HQ, he found some. An abandoned drug store sat on the intersection he crossed, and there were a few enlisted men already scrounging around inside, claiming whatever they could find. He normally wasn’t one for taking souvenirs, but he was more compelled by the idea of doing something nice for Melanie. So he stepped through the kicked in door and looked around. The makeup aisle had already been pretty thoroughly picked over - broken bottles and compacts littered the floor, but one last untouched gold tube on the shelf caught his eye. A red lipstick. He took it. 

He glanced around for nail polish too, but the only color left was a dark purple, which he could not for the life of him imagine Melanie wearing. The lipstick would have to do. 

 He intended on giving it to her that day, but he got caught up in several different briefings, which evidently could not be postponed. So many that he sent Zielinski to the hospital with a message asking Melanie to join him in his office for dinner. They hadn’t had significant time together in much too long, and he missed it. So he was grateful when she accepted and agreed to meet him at eight o’clock. 

Dick got worried when eight-fifteen came and went. He checked his watch for the tenth time in the last sixty seconds and sighed, fearing that Melanie had forgotten him. Or worse, something was terribly wrong at the hospital, and she was enduring further tragedy. Finally, when he was about ready to go looking for her himself, there was a knock on the door. 

“Come in!” he called. 

To his great relief, Melanie walked through the door, closing it softly behind her. She looked a bit sheepish as she came closer. 

“I’m so sorry I’m late, Dick,” she said. “Sergeant Samson and I were just wrapping up.”

“More canasta?” he asked. 

She nodded. “It’s his favorite game. He used to play it with his sisters back home. He’s got three of them.” 

“Three sisters, wow,” he remarked. “No brothers?”

“One,” she said sadly. “But he was killed on Guadalcanal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But I’m impressed with you. You really get to know the men you’re treating.” 

“I certainly try,” she said. “Hospitals can often feel overly clinical and cold. Doctors don’t have much time to spend with patients, and nurses can get overwhelmed. I don’t want the patients to mistake that for not caring.” 

Dick had met very few people who had the emotional capability to invest so much in others. For a fleeting moment, he likened Melanie to a priest or pastor, with a flock of people to look after, but what she did was different. She wasn’t a spiritual guide or advisor. She was a simple comfort. A place to tell someone about your favorite game or your siblings or your life story. A generous ear to listen to you talk about something besides your pain. 

“That’s very sweet of you,” he told her, keeping the true depth of it to himself. 

She took a seat across from him at his desk, and they had dinner together. At first, she asked mostly about him and how he was doing, but he eventually turned it around. He let her talk about the patients she’d met at this hospital, and she shared little tidbits of their lives. She wasn’t burdened by it, either. In each one, she found something of interest, worth remembering and holding onto. He listened, but he knew he’d never be able to recall everything the way she did. But he hoped he helped by doing a little bit of what she did for others, for her.  

When they finished eating, she sat back with a satisfied smile. He loved that look on her face and he couldn’t help but smile a bit himself. To continue that momentum, he went into his desk and pulled out his gift for her. He didn’t have a box or anything this time, so it wasn’t nearly as big as the gift of the dress, but he hoped she’d still appreciate it. 

“I got something for you,” he said. 

She raised an eyebrow. “You did?”

He placed the tube of lipstick on the desk as her mouth fell open. But a sparkle in her eyes told him it was a delighted sort of shock. 

“Where did you get this?” she gasped. She picked it up and examined it, as if not quite believing it was real. 

“There’s a drug store in town that’s...no longer in operation,” he explained. He still didn’t love that he’d technically stolen it, but he wouldn’t let her know. “I think every man in the regiment got something for the women in his life. And you mentioned wanting some.” 

“And you remembered?” she wondered. 

“Sure I did,” he replied with a chuckle. 

“How kind of you,” she said, her grin widening. “I can’t wait to use it! Thank you so much!”

Did anything feel better than making her happy? Dick wasn’t sure. The warmth in his chest told him there was nothing. It didn’t matter that he’d taken it by looting. For that smile, he was prepared to commit highway robbery.  

“You’re welcome,” he returned. 

He watched her gaze at the items in her hand, a pensive, contemplative expression coming over her features. There was something more she wanted to say. Knowing her, she would shake her head, smile again, and mumble “never mind” mostly to herself before moving on. He hoped she wouldn’t, so he remained silent, giving her the space to work through what she was thinking. 

“It seems silly to say this over something so small,” she began, her voice soft, so he had to lean closer in order to hear. “But may I share something with you?” 

“Of course,” he assured her, though the question made him nervous. 

He tried to think of what could make her so serious all of a sudden, but nothing immediately came to mind. A split second of doubt came over him that she was going to confess she had met someone else because she was tired of waiting for him. But that seemed like a rather outlandish conclusion to jump to. He slowed down his thoughts and focused on her. 

“I know you’ve been wondering about what caused me to leave the hospital in Bastogne and come to the front lines,” she began. “And I haven’t been able to tell you. I’m sorry.” 

He was still curious, but he certainly didn’t want her to feel like she had to talk about that just because of a lipstick he didn’t even pay for. 

“You don’t have to-”

“Please,” she cut across him. “Let me get this out before I lose my nerve.” 

“Take your time,” he said gently. 

She nodded and took a deep breath. Tears pricked her eyes as she released it, slow and shaky. He mentally braced himself to hear the worst. 

“Before the hospital was bombed, Terry...made me an offer,” she continued. “For a life together after the war. He told me he had always had feelings for me and basically that he wanted to marry me.” She ran the fingers on her right hand over the ring finger of her left. 

“Naturally, I refused,” she went on. “I wasn’t in love with him.” She paused there, toying with the lipstick tube, as if debating adding something onto that sentence, but decided against it. “I thought my answer was clear, even before the bombing. But the day I was supposed to return to work, he came to my room.”

She stopped again, chewing her bottom lip before swallowing hard. 

“He’d had a bit to drink,” she said. “He wasn’t out of control, but I could smell it when he got close to me. He proposed again. I refused him. He shouted at me that he loved me. He said he couldn’t bear the thought of me with another man. And that’s when he started to throw things.” 

Beads of sweat appeared on her brow and hairline. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, undeterred, though trembling. She rubbed her hand against the fabric of her dress to dry it off.

“I pleaded with him to stop, but he grabbed me by my face,” she said. “Painfully. Then he looked me in the eyes and threatened to...crush my skull against the vanity, to use his words.” 

She looked at him, and suddenly, she halted and met his gaze.

“Am I upsetting you?” she asked. 

If he didn’t know her better, he would have thought she was being sarcastic - trying to remind him just who really had been hurt here, but she wasn’t. She was genuinely concerned about him in a moment like this. Her tone, apologetic. 

Dick’s anger had risen from a simmer to a boil. He’d been trying to maintain composure as she spoke. He did not want her to lose her nerve by seeing him get agitated, but he couldn’t help the set of his jaw. He regretted not fighting Clarke when he’d had the chance because maybe this might not have happened. It’s harder to throw things and grab people with broken fingers, after all. He shook his head and took a deep breath to calm down, intentionally relaxing every muscle in his face. 

“I’m fine, Mel,” he lied. “Please, go on.” 

She raised a skeptical eyebrow, but did not protest. 

“I tried to resist,” she continued. “But then he grabbed me by the throat. If he said anything else at that point, I didn’t hear. I was blacking out quickly. And for a moment, I was afraid...I was so afraid I was going to die.” 

She choked on the last word, and she swiped the tear that leaked onto her cheek away quickly. He kept his gaze fixed on her face, watching her lip quiver. He knew it was ridiculous, but overwhelming guilt sank its claws into his heart. He should have been there to defend her. He should have warned Colonel Sink about Terry. He should have done something. Even now, he wished he could protect her from the very memory of it. 

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “But somehow I found the strength to get away. I remember striking him, but not much else. That was when Colonel Sink showed up. And I begged him to let me go...well, anywhere that wasn’t the hospital. He suggested the Bois Jacques, and I agreed.” 

He sat with it a moment, impressed at her resilience, and a little relieved that nothing worse had happened - and he had imagined much worse, especially when she said the altercation had taken place in her bedroom. But she got away. She rescued herself. There was something to be said for that. 

“I’m so sorry you went through that, Mel,” he said. “You were very brave.”

“Please don’t flatter me, Dick,” she replied. “Dogs have enough courage to fight back when attacked. I acted on instinct.”

“Even so, you did well,” he insisted. He hesitated asking his next question, unsure how she might take it or if she was receptive to being questioned at all. 

“Why didn’t you report him?” he asked, feeling desperate. “That’s a court martial offense, assaulting a fellow officer.”

“Colonel Sink offered to do the paperwork, but I asked him not to,” she told him. “There’s no point, really. It would be my word against his and that rarely goes well for a woman.” 

Dick carefully disguised his distaste for that answer. He wasn’t frustrated by Melanie, but that she was right. 

“Besides,” she said. “He didn’t really do anything. He just frightened me, that’s all.” 

“That’s a bit of an understatement,” he returned. “He nearly killed you.” 

She shrugged, keeping her eyes fixed on her hands, which were in her lap now, fidgeting with the lipstick tube, which made a soft pop each time she opened or closed it.

“You may think you’re being kind by showing him mercy, Mel,” he said. “But Terry should be at the least reprimanded for what he’s done. I know it’s hard, but you’re brave enough to -”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. 

“Dick, stop it!” she cried, looking desperately at him. “I’m not brave or strong or kind or anything else! I’m scared, alright?! I didn’t report Terry because I’m terrified that he will find me again! And how much worse would it be if he had nothing to lose?! It isn’t mercy, it’s fear!”

She lowered her eyes to the floor and tried to draw in a breath. It was shallow and shaky, catching on the lump in her throat. He couldn’t stand that he was not holding her. So he got to his feet, crossed to the other side of his desk, stood before her, and held out his hand. She looked at it, then up at his face, before placing her fingers in his palm. He helped her to stand. Then, he gathered her up in his arms. Her forehead found a resting place on his chest, and she nuzzled into him. They fit together like puzzle pieces. 

“I’m sorry, Melanie,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry.” When she only nodded, he continued. “You’re safe now.” 

“Yes,” she said softly into his chest. “Yes, I know.”

He made a silent promise to himself and her. From here on out, he would be her personal shield. No one deserved what she had endured, but she especially didn’t. This woman, who was all heart and grace and goodness. He would protect her with everything he had.

[ava-candide]

Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci

The newly married heart-throb actor learnt to paint left-handed for his new role, and he’s still daubing now, he tells Ed Potton

Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath Leonardo

I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?

“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.

Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says

Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping history

Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.

Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”

And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”

Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming started

The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.

Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”

Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”

What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”

Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.

“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”

We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”

Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”

Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.

“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.

“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”

It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”

Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”

Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.

That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.

[jcmorrigan]

Rank all the disguises that Megavolt and Quackerjack wore in “Stressed To Kill” from best to worst in your opinion. BTW, thanks for reblogging my fanart of those 2 as Dr. Heebie and Dr. Jeebie.

Okay, just rewatched this, and I'm gonna go worst to best because that order's more fun. I'm also expanding the parameters - it's every outfit they wore. I'm gonna do a separate list first for the ones we were told about but never saw, and that I wish we had seen.

THE UNSEEN, WORST TO BEST:

4. A cowboy and an Indigenous American

The 90s were, uh, a weird time when it came to cultural appropriation. I'm not too mad we didn't see these getups, especially since Megavolt in a feather headdress already happened in "Comic Book Capers" (which is how I know it was him). Oh, but he was also in a cowboy hat in the giant magnet episode. Neither of these was anything special. Except, y'know, the headdress was awkward because 90's appropriation

3. Two pumpkins

Kinda vanilla, and probably identical, but let's face it: this would've been hecka cute. Imagine the slapstick potential! One of them probably trips and falls over and rolls for like a BLOCK!

2. Pirates

If Megs is wearing the pirate outfit from Darkwing Doubloon, then I definitely wanna see that again, because that was a nice outfit. Quackerjack, of course, wears THE EXACT SAME THING HE ALWAYS DOES in that episode, but he's described as being one of two pirates, which means this time, he ACTUALLY WORE THE COSTUME, so please, give me the forbidden Pirate Quackerjack!

1. Circus clowns

They already are clowns. Let me see them wear their true colors of clownitude. Also think of all the colors! The polka dots! There's so much you can do with this aesthetic, and it'd work so well for them since they usually wear bright colors to begin with!

THE SEEN, WORST TO BEST:

6. Firefighter Quackerjack

This one barely counts, but what the hey. Thing is, he went to all the trouble of putting on the hat and getting a tiny fire truck in order to light that fire, so why didn't he go for the coat as well? Rest of the uniform? I want to see him commit a heist as a firefighter and have an axe strapped to his belt that he attempts to use in close combat but fumbles and drops harmlessly on his foot. Also, Megavolt didn't get a corresponding outfit, so booooo.

5. Pharaohs

These guys have been wearing crazy costumes all dang week and then all of a sudden, they show up wearing just pharaoh headdresses and no other part of the costume? I mean, I guess that avoids another weird 90s cultural appropriation incident, but it's also so vanilla. C'mon, you guys can step it up. Now, I’ve just been reminded that this is because they literally just stole the headdresses from the museum and decided to wear their loot home, as opposed to coming up with an actual disguise, so this can get a pass to some extent. Still, you know these boys would’ve loved to wear EVEN MORE historical costuming from that same museum.

4. The community service jumpsuits

No, not a disguise, but I think they look kinda neat in these. I like the running gag that Quackerjack never takes off his jester hat no matter what else he wears. I think the Paddywhack episode is the only time we ever see him without the hat, and that's for maybe three seconds as he's sucked into the vortex. That hat is part of him.

3. Their normal outfits

Okay, I just wanna talk about how great their designs are, okay? The bright colors. The fact that they're pretty much palette opposites - QJ is red and purple while Megavolt is yellow and blue with a little orange. The way their aesthetics are completely different, but also totally complement one another. You see them committing crimes together and you're like "They just GO. They MATCH."

2. Doctors Heebie and Jeebie

Absolutely classic Quackerjack-and-Megavolt disguises. Lab coats, masks, the immersive experience. Princess, you've pointed out that they actually look more like dentists, and that's CORRECT, and it's even funnier that way because they still get away with it. The longer that scene goes on and the more Darkwing just DOESN'T REALIZE who's in front of him, despite, y'know, the JESTER HAT, the funnier it gets. I'm always a sucker for when Paper Thin Disguises inexplicably work. It's peak humor.

1. Shakespearean actors

Okay, but this had to take the cake! Quackerjack in old English clothing with a waistcoat? Snappy! MEGAVOLT IN A DRESS, THOUGH? PERFECTION. I also love that his complaint is that by that point, it's getting "boring." He never has any aversion to the dress due to femininity, and does a cute little curtsy with it later in the scene - no, his problem is just that it's the fourth costume in the same night. But it's a very beautiful dress, and it suits him quite well. I like that he's comfortable enough with his masculinity to rock it.

But, uh...c'mere. Got a secret for you. Okay, you ready? So Quackerjack's outfit is mostly earth tones with a green vest. Megavolt's is a purple gown with corset lacing in front. They're...they're Eugene and Rapunzel from Tangled. This was years before Tangled was even a concept but SOMEHOW they are wearing a pretty convincing Tangled cosplay. Food for thought.

[captain-ross-poldark]

Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci

Ed Potton

Friday 2 April 2021

Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath LeonardoJUSTIN SUTCLIFFE/EYEVIN

I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?

“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.

Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says.

Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping historyPA

Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.

Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”

And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”

Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming startedVITTORIA FENATI MORACE

The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.

Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”

Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”

What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”

With his wife, the American actress Caitlin FitzGeraldREX FEATURES

Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.

“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”

We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”

Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”

Turner with Eleanor Tomlinson in PoldarkMIKE HOGAN

Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator ofThe Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.

“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.

“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”

It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”

Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”

Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.

That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.

All episodes of Leonardo will be on Amazon from April 16

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poldarks-aidan-turner-on-playing-leonardo-da-vinci-wnmqhxqxr

[girlsgonemildblog]

Valley of the Dolls and Hollywood's Desire to Self-Protect

Poster from imdb.com

Valley of the Dolls (1967) tells the story of three young women working in show business in the 1960s. Originally adapted from Jacqueline Susann’s 1966 book by the same name, the screenplay was written by two women, Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley. The director for the film, though, was a man, named Mark Robson. The plot centers around three protagonists, Anne Welles, Neely O’Hara, and Jennifer North. Their stories connect and separate several times as they each navigate Hollywood, growing in stardom and fading into oblivion. All three storylines follow two themes, the role of women in the 1960s and the abuse of drugs by these women to deal with the pressures of their culture. The film largely stays true to the novel, but alters some important aspects in order to soften the critique that Susann originally proposed. Valley of the Dolls is an attempted commentary on societal demands on women in the 1960s, but is unsuccessful in its criticism due to continuing to perpetuate several misogynistic standards and Hollywood trying to alleviate itself of guilt.

Valley of the Dolls is one of few movies from its era that centers on multiple female leads without allowing for any male characters to come in and dominate the narrative. The story goes further than to just portray women, and even passes commentary on the harmful expectations put on them by society. There are messages about the workforce, body image, and marriage roles all present. Still, while the film may seem to have a feminist message for most of the plot, it falls short in its final moments. The two women, Neely and Jennifer, who are outwardly ambitious and more sexually promiscuous, are punished for their behavior, while the virginally pure and soft spoken Anne is the one who gets a happy ending, though not in the traditional sense.

The first woman to look at is Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke). Neely, the youngest of the three, is also the most talented and the most ambitious. While her two co-protagonists experience minor stardom, Neely becomes a full-fledged celebrity. As Neely begins her rise to the top, she is forced to work out, despite already being nearly rail thin. During her work-out montage, she even asks her trainer, “you call this acting?” This moment serves to show that for women, being an actor was not strictly about their talent, but also the way they looked. Working out is a part of the job for Neely because if she gains weight, people will no longer want to look at her and thus she won’t be able to be on stage or screen.

The affect of her ambition on her womanhood is also seen through the depiction of her first marriage to her hometown sweetheart, Mel (Martin Milner). When Neely gets her big break, she asks Mel to marry her, flipping the tradition of a man asking a woman. This is the first evidence of the gender role reversal that will be present later. In one scene, after Neely has made it and begun earning more money, the audience sees that Mel is now in charge of keeping house, a job typically meant for the wife at this time. The two get into an argument and Mel, sick of being bossed around by Neely, states, “I am not the butler,” to which Neely retorts, “you’re not the bread winner either.” The two get divorced shortly after. In the beginning of the movie, as Neely is about to be cut out of the broadway show, Mel gives her advice on how to handle the situation in a way that is both best for her career and best for earning money. Mel is more than happy to support Neely’s ambition when she is starting out and he is controlling her success. When Neely grows beyond his grasp, begins to overshadow him, and no longer needs him, the turmoil of their relationship begins. Mel’s male ego cannot handle having a wife who not only is not reliant on him, but who he is reliant on.

In contrast, Jennifer’s fatal flaw is not her ambition but her body. The audience is introduced to Jennifer (Sharon Tate) as she is scantily clad in a leotard with a giant showgirl headpiece on. Her first line is concern that she cannot walk, “I feel a little top heavy,” to which her director replies, “Dear, you are top heavy.” This is met by a chorus of laughter from the men in the room and clear distress from Jennifer’s face. Jennifer’s sin is simply her breasts and her beauty; she is punished for merely existing in her natural form. On the phone with her mother, she states, “I know I don’t have any talent, and I know all I have is my body.” She recognizes that she has no marketable skills, but with the way that society has commodified the female figure, she can use her natural assets to get ahead.

Jennifer’s plot line introduces the character of Miriam (Lee Grant), the sister of Jennifer’s husband, Tony (Tony Scotti). Miriam also manages Tony. This is interesting because all the other women in the film are controlled by men, but Miriam is not only not controlled by a man, but controls one herself. Jennifer, who seems not to have a manager, but operates as an independent, eventually is taken on by Miriam, emphasizing the way that Miriam acts as a male figure, controlling and dominating her world like men normally do. Miriam eventually sells Jennifer into porn. When Jennifer tries to protest, Miriam insists, “Tony wouldn’t know the difference.” Jennifer’s plea of “well, I would,” falls on deaf ears. Miriam views the world like a man, thinking only a husband should be offended by his wife’s immodesty, not recognizing that the woman is also a person with feelings about the exposure of her own body.

Jennifer’s whole life and career is based on her body. When she is diagnosed with breast cancer and must get a mastectomy, she states, “all I ever had was a body. All I know how to do is take off my clothes.” She is realizing that without her breasts, she will have no way of earning a living or supporting herself, as she has done her whole life. This drives her to suicide, deciding she would rather die than lose her body. The message of this scene is clear; despite the fact that society has deemed her figure the only thing that gives her value, her exploitation of it still must be punished by death. Women are supposed to surrender to the forces of the patriarchy, not use them to their own advantage.

The third protagonist, the redeemable protagonist, is Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins). Anne is introduced at the very beginning of the film through her own narration as she tells the listener that her family’s home has been around since the revolution, showing that she represents American tradition. The story of George Washington drinking from their well symbolizes that people like Anne are what give America life. This American idealization is what protects Anne throughout her career. As she enters the office for the first time to the slut shaming of a pregnant cat, the audience immediately knows that this place will not be very friendly to women. This is fortified when her boss tells her she is “too good looking” for her job and talks about getting her “broken in”. This is exemplifying the idea that beautiful women aren’t meant for work while also objectifying them by talking about women like they’re shoes.

Her romantic interest, Lyon (Paul Burke), who is also her boss, calls Anne, “barely pink” when he first meets her, admiring how young she is. He later tells her that jewelry is not for her, and that she should only be gifted flowers, specifically white ones. These are both attempts to preserve Anne’s delicacy, or “pinkness”.  Diamonds and gold are too flashy for a soft spoken woman like Anne, and the white flowers clearly symbolize purity. Constantly throughout the entire film, the audience is reminded of Anne being special and unlike other “bad” women such as Neely or Jennifer. At one point Lyon tells Anne that no other girls compare to her because they can’t “stand up to her image”. Not her actual person or personality, but her image. Anne does not have actual personhood in the eyes of Lyon, but exists only as the idealized woman.

This is further exemplified when she becomes the Gillian Girl. The man who hires her says he wants someone known with Gillian exclusively. The idea here is they want her to be only an image of beauty and innocence; if she works with other brands or as an actress she becomes more than one-dimensional and people can discover that she may have flaws. Anne’s ability to maintain her image of perfection and purity throughout the entire film is why she gets to live happily ever after at the end, unlike her two counterparts. She returns to her hometown and lives out the rest of her life as the embodiment of American tradition.

This movie gets its title from the nickname that Neely gives the pills that she and the other two protagonists all become addicted to. The name, “dolls”, calls to mind a picture of girlhood and female adolescence, highlighting how young Neely is (only 17) when the story begins. Many movies of the 1960s, such as Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) were depicting taking psychedelic drugs and having crazy trips. Valley of the Dolls shows a different type of drug use, the abuse of painkillers. Though the main characters are movie stars and models, their drug habit was likely more relatable to the suburban movie-going audience than that of Hopper’s characters. It was all too common for housewives to be prescribed “mother’s little helpers” to deal with what was condescendingly written off as “hysteria”. Another difference between these two movies is that psychedelic trips were portrayed as freeing, eye-opening experiences. In contrast, the painkillers are entrapping for the women and ultimately ruin their careers and end their lives.

The character who has the least interaction with the “dolls” is Anne. This is done to keep the idea of Anne as the “pure”, “good” character. The way she begins to take the drugs is interesting, though; she first picks up the bottle when she realizes that her long-term boyfriend, Lyon, is having an affair with her best friend, Neely. This serves two purposes. This first is that it shows that the pills are not used for pleasure, like psychedelics would be, but for numbing purposes. This also displays the corruptive force of Hollywood; it is not until the plot moves from New York to Hollywood that these women turn sour. Because of this city, Neely betrays her best friend and sweet, innocent Anne is driven to drug use.

Jennifer is seen taking the pills two times, twice as often as Anne is. The first time she takes them is when she learns about Tony’s illness. Again, they are used to numb emotional pain. The second time Jennifer is shown taking the pills is when she purposely overdoses on them to kill herself. This is the most extreme version of numbing difficult emotions a person can take, and the most obvious way that the movie could show that these drugs do not provide enjoyment but rather stop misery. What the “dolls” provide is nothingness, and Jennifer takes this nothingness to its maximum.

Neely is the character whose story is most entangled with drug use. She begins when her trainer gives her diet pills to slim her already thin figure. During this montage, the audience clearly sees Mel, the symbol of her pre-fame life, shake his head and tell her no, but she responds with a shrug, as if to say, “what’s the worst that could happen?” Shortly after, she tells Anne that she takes sleeping pills that are so strong, she has to take red pills to counteract them to wake up in the mornings, but then must take the sleeping pills again at night because the red ones have not yet worn off. Taking the pills is an endless cycle for Neely that will lead her to spiral to rock bottom.

In a following scene, Neely is seen being an absolute mess on the set of a movie, causing them to call for her husband to take her home because she cannot work under such strong influence of drugs and alcohol. When Anne and Lyon go to check on her, Anne lectures her about the danger of drinking while taking the pills, but Neely asserts that she must do so because it makes them work faster. This moment shows the desperation Neely has to stop feeling. Later on, after getting drunk in a dive-bar, having sex with some random nobody, and being robbed the morning after, Neely overdoses and nearly dies. Anne implies that this may have been intentional, despite Neely insisting otherwise. The audience is left to wonder.

During the third act of the movie, after Neely has gone to rehab and gotten clean, her older rival, Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward), brags about how she never needed pills like Neely did. Lawson claims her current sobriety is only temporary and Neely will eventually return to her old bad habits. The character summarizes Neely’s entire story with one line, “nothing can destroy her talent, but she’ll destroy herself.” Lawson’s words come true; Neely’s final scene sees her relapsing on opening night of the show she’s supposed to star in and being replaced by her younger understudy, the very thing she was afraid of. Her story closes on her drunk in an alley, screaming her own name.

To properly analyze this film, one must compare it to its source material, Jacqueline Susann’s novel by the same name. Though the movie stays true to the novel in most major plot points, there are distinct narrative changes and omissions that drastically alter the story. One of the most distinct examples of this is that Lyon refuses to marry Anne until the final scene of the film. In the novel, he marries her when they first reunite in Los Angeles. When he begins his affair with Neely, Anne is pregnant with their first child, which gives Anne a stronger motive to turn to the pills than she has in the movie. The book version of the two women are also much closer friends, which creates a more dramatic change in Neely’s character than in the film. Removing these two extremes makes Neely’s character arc less impactful.

Another aspect that was removed is Tony’s obsession with sex. An important part of Jennifer’s characterization is that she has always been made to feel that her body is her only source of value. This is added to, in the novel, by the fact that sex is the foundation for her relationship with her husband. This is only alluded to in the film with one line when they are walking in the park. In the novel, it is emphasized explicitly at multiple points. One of the reasons Jennifer chooses to kill herself rather than lose her breasts is because she believes she will lose even her husband’s love. The film likely made this change, as well as the marital change, to make the characters of Tony and Neely more sympathetic. While this goal is accomplished, it also softens the harsh realities that Susann was trying to expose in her novel.

One final difference between the film and novel is the ending. In the film, Lyon finally proposes to Anne and she rejects him, getting to move on with her life and live peacefully. She gets a happy ending. The novel ends with Anne and Lyon still married, her discovering that he is having yet another affair with a client, and her returning to the pills. This final note makes it clear that there are no happy endings for women in this city. The change is another example of Hollywood trying to show itself in a more flattering light than the one Susann placed on it.

Valley of the Dolls, the novel, was written by a female author as a way to condemn the mistreatment of women in the 1960s, specifically the mistreatment perpetuated by Hollywood on women in show business. The film adaptation tries to duplicate this commentary, but fails for multiple reasons. The first is that it chooses to save the “good girl” character. In the written work, all three stories ending in tragedy shows how no woman is safe from the effects of the patriarchy. Opting to protect the “pure” character alters the message completely so that it is no longer a criticism but a continuation of the idea that ambitious, promiscuous women deserve punishment and good, virginal women deserve happy endings. In addition, it omits important plot points that provide motivation for the characters self-destructive actions, such as Anne taking the pills for the first time and Jennifer committing suicide. By removing the catalysts, the characters are turned into cliché hysterical women. The film fails to adapt Susann’s novel correctly because it replicates the sensational bits while omitting the message. Unlike the book, the film serves only to entertain and not to critique.

[flufflepuffle296]

Heathers au: Beautiful Songfic

This is more centred around Veronica/Marinette so not really any mentions of Heather/Heather/Heather. Sorry if someone’s done this before I apologise I just got into Heathers like two days ago. Also I changed some lyrics and took others out to make it more “realistic”. Sorry I suck at endings, it’s 5:30am rn and this is my first fic so be nice please! (I’m on mobile so I can’t add the keep reading tag so sorry if you don’t like this) xxx

I brushed down my dress: I couldn’t give them anything to criticise me over. Everything had to be perfect. I had to be perfect. Chloé sat next to me, my beautiful fiancée, slipping on her kitten heels. She may be 3 months pregnant but no Bourgeois woman would be seen wearing flats. I was in a red floor length a line dress — I grew out of my childish pink years ago, before it even went out of fashion! My hair was twisted into two plaits that were knotted together into a stylish bun at the back. Chloé meanwhile had stuck to her white and gold aesthetic, currently in a slim fitting white dress, showing off her small baby bump, decorated with gold jewellery. I rummaged through my drawers, trying to find a lipstick, when a thin book toppled out. I picked it up, and laughed fondly when I saw what it was.

My old Collège and Lycée diary.

I flipped through it, landing on the page that stuck most clearly in my mind. It was the day my class reminded me of my current reality at that time, shocking me out of a bubble that had surrounded me during the summer holidays that year.

September 1st, 1989.

Dear Diary: I believe I'm a good person. You know, I think that there's good in everyone, but—here we are! First day of senior year!

And uh... I look around at these kids that I've known all my life and I ask myself—what happened?

I bit my lip. What happened? I knew darn well what happened. Lila Rossi. She came in, flaunting her friendships and connections, a new disability every other week to cry about, another rumour about me coming out every 3 days.

Alya ended our friendship, Adrien continued to cry about Lila’s feelings. Lila just kept doing what she did best. The class gave up on changing my mind and instead decided that calling me names would be better. Because logic?!

“Freak!” “Slut!” “Burnout!” “Bug-eyes!” “Poser!” “Lard-ass!” Were the insults they liked to yell daily. Yeah, they weren’t the most creative...

We were so tiny, happy and shiny. Playing tag and getting chased. Singing and clapping, laughing and napping. Baking cookies, eating paste.

Nino and Kim used to come over to the bakery when we were kids, where we’d gorge ourselves on sweets, before celebrating our sugar rushes by chasing each other in the park and then crashing on my sofa, cuddled in blankets and laying on top of each other.

Then we got bigger, that was the trigger. Like the Huns invading Rome. Welcome to my school, this ain't no high school: This is the Thunderdome. Hold your breath and count the days, we're graduating soon. College will be paradise, if I'm not dead by June!

But I know, I know, life can be beautiful. I pray, I pray for a better way. If we changed back then, we could change again. We can be beautiful...Just not today.

I scoffed at my optimism back then. Them changing? They never did, I don’t know why I bothered trying at that point. I should’ve moved on but hey! We all make mistakes. It’s just that sometimes you make 11 friendships worth of mistakes.

“Freak!” “Slut!” “Cripple!” “Homo!” “Homo!” “Homo!”

I cringed as I read their old “insults”. They would write homophobic messages across my locker, getting Alix to spray paint a few slurs across my work after I came out as bisexual.

Things will get better soon as my letter comes from Harvard, Duke, or Brown. Wake from this coma, take my diploma. Then I can blow this town. Dream of ivy-covered walls, no smoky French cafés. Fight the urge to strike a match and set this dump ablaze!

I had purposefully sent out applications to universities far away from these people, from Paris. All three schools accepted me, something I can’t say about my classmates, most of whom were rejected for essays on false information (sourced by Lila) and a quick scan over the Ladyblog meant not a single newspaper would even consider my ex-best friend. Gabriel Agreste, as I later found out through my internship in America, had to bribe several schools with double tuition to get even one to accept Adrien, after he got exposed as sexual harasser and disgraced hero “Chat Noir”. I turned back to my diary, having to peel off rock hard gum from the page that someone had smeared in “revenge”.

Le Chiên Kim. Third year as linebacker and eighth year of smacking lunch trays and being a huge dick.

“What did you say to me, skank?” He would yell, his fist raised in the hallway.

“Aah, nothing!” I then cowered. I may be Ladybug, but he was 150lbs of pure rage. No one can compete with that!

But I know, I know... Life can be beautiful. I pray, I pray, For a better way. We can be beautiful...

“Marinette! Wide load! Honnnnnk!”

He was the smartest guy on the football team. Which is kind of like being the tallest dwarf.

“Hey! Pick that up! Right now!”

“I’m sorry, are you actually talking to me?” He used to snarl, his hands covered in sauce from knocking my tray.

I stood my ground, I had been practising for this moment. “Yes, I am. I wanna know what gives you the right to pick on me. You're a high school has-been waiting to happen. A future gas station attendant.”

Kim then smirked, crouching down to eye level and pressing a finger to my forehead. “You have a zit right there...” he pointed out, causing the cafeteria to laugh at my expense.

I used to ask myself “Why... Why do they hate me?”

And hear Adrien whisper “Why don't I fight back?”

Watch as Max Googled “Why do I act like such a creep?”

Listen in on Lila stamping her feet in the bathroom asking “Why won't he date me?” Clearly frustrated.

Kim panicking as he wondered “Why did I hit him?”

And Chloé sob down the phone “Why do I cry myself to sleep?”

I would stay up late, screaming, begging. At my lowest points I would cry out “Somebody hug me! Somebody fix me! Somebody save me! Send me a sign, God! Give me some hope, here! Something to live for!”

I remember when I first met my real friends. The famed trio had gone into the bathroom and I followed after them, clearly my throat.

“Who are you?”

“Uh... Marinette Dupain Cheng. I crave a boon”

“What boon?” Chloé asked, filing her nails.

“Um. Let me sit at your table, at lunch. If our class think that you guys tolerate me, then they'll leave me alone...”

Chloé threw her nail file out and began circling around me, running her hands through my hair, commenting that “For a greasy little nobody, you do have good bone structure!” Before coming to a conclusion.

“And ya know, ya know, ya know? This could be beautiful. Mascara, maybe some lip gloss, and we're on our way. Get this girl some blush; and Kagami, I need your brush. Let's make her beautiful.” Sabrina and Kagami, chimed in, echoing her words.

“Let's make her beautiful...”

“Let’s make her beautiful...”

“Make her beautiful...Okay?” Chloé ordered, dragging me out with Kagami and Sabrina, driving me to her hotel. They sat me down, taking my hair out of its bunches and brushing it out. Kagami painted my nails a deep navy with surprising precision, manning my cuticles. Sabrina twirled my hair into a high bun, leaving a few pieces at the front to frame my face. Chloé came back from her wardrobe, throwing a blue blazer and grey skirt at me. I changed into my outfit for them, to which they clapped their hands in glee. They dragged me back to school, taking in everyone’s reactions to the new and improved me. This became my new daily outfit for the rest of the year — the class couldn’t find anything bad about it, and even if they did Chloé would threaten them with her father’s power.

I was happy with my squad. Kagami taught us Japanese and Chloé taught us American English that she’d picked up from her mother. I taught them self defence, under the guise of learning it from my mum, unknowingly training them for the day I would rip Chat Noir’s miraculous from him, before slamming it into Kagami’s palm. I needed help that day, so thrust them bee and the fox miraculous at Chloé and Sabrina respectively. They became permanent heroes, Kagami under the name “Noirette”, Chloé under the new guise of “Buttercup” and Sabrina “Renard Rouge”. Akuma attacks have never lasted more than 15 minutes since we got rid of that alley cat, and we’ve been closing in on Hawkmoth recently.

I shook my head, snapping the crude book shut, throwing the diary in the bin. Today was going to be the day I made peace with all that happened, our 10 year school reunion. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna make up with anyone, just that I will finally leave everything behind. I found my lipstick and smeared on the crimson lip, smacking my lips together. I grabbed my clutch and helped Chloé stand up, though she wobbled a little in her heels. I slid her miraculous into her updo, blowing a kiss at her as to not ruin her makeup.

We met up with Kagami and Sabrina in the hallway, Kagami in a wine red suit with gold jewellery, and Sabrina was in emerald green to compliment her red hair. We stepped into the limo awaiting us outside and set off, arriving at the school 10 minutes later. We walked up the steps, hitching up our dresses and arrived in the courtyard. It had been lit up with fairy lights, with stands of food and drinks scattered around the court. Our old classmates were huddled in small groups, whilst Mlle. Mendeleiev’s was in a large group, enjoying each other’s company after 10 years apart.

No one noticed us, until Rose pointed at me and whispered “Who’s that with Chloé?” The group turned to stare at us, trying to place my face. Adrien looked up from talking to Lila, who seemed to be flaunting a rather tacky Gabriel engagement ring, and whispered,

“Marinette?!”

The class began gossiping amongst themselves, “Marinette? Marinette? Marinette?!”

I ignored them, their childish ways were behind me, and walked up to Aurore and Mireille, fawning over their relationship. They turned Kagami, asking her about her life and squealing over her Olympic medal for fencing. I grinned as I watched my old class, happy that they had moved on from each other — well apart from Alya and Adrien, who were still hooked on Lila. I was finally, content! I thought back on my diary, one particular paragraph standing out to me at this time.

And you know, you know, you know, life can be beautiful. You hope, you dream, you pray, and you get your way! Ask me how it feels, lookin' like hell on wheels...My God, it's beautiful! I feel so beautiful... And when you're beautiful...It's a beautiful frickin' day!

Chloé boasted my achievements, my business, my awards, and the entire of Mendeleiev’s class started chanting “Marinette! Marinette! Marinette!”, much to my embarrassment. I boasted her’s in return, Sabrina revealed how far she’d come as a lawyer, Kagami swung her prized sword from side to side as she listened to us all catching up, laughing at the memories.

It really was a beautiful day.

[olivemac]

heartbeat | chapter two | b.b.

Summary | When Steve Rogers asks Kate Stark to find the Winter Soldier, she gets too involved.

Notes | Captain America: Civil War re-write, essentially. Starts just after the events of CA: Winter Soldier.

Pairing | Bucky Barnes x fem!oc, Bucky Barnes x Stark!oc

Genre | romance

Rating | explicit

Story Warnings | angst, fluff, romance tropes, so many romance tropes, coarse language, alcohol use, canon-typical violence , smut (m/f), oral sex (f&m receiving), 18+ ONLY

Chapter Warnings | coarse language

master list | AO3 link

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prev chapter

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Kate is on the next commercial flight to Bucharest. She's worried Bucky will move on before she can get to him, but she knows Tony would never approve of the use of one of his jets to chase down an ex-assassin in hiding. The less he knows, the better. Which is why she told him she was escaping to Europe for a long respite after feeling oh so overwhelmed with her work at Stark Industries.

Tony barely bats an eye when she told him. There were some advantages to being Tony Starks' baby sister. The first being he feels guilty about his ineptness at raising her after their parents' death and would literally let her get away with murder. The second is an almost unlimited bank account left to her by her father and supplemented by Tony's previously mentioned guilt.

Kate Stark was her mother’s mid-life crisis. Maria, three decades younger than her husband, had – at forty-two years old – decided she wanted another baby. Tony, who was eighteen at the time, had balked at the idea. But Howard relented and called in the best team of fertility doctors money could buy, and Kate was born.

She doesn't remember her parents, not really. She was only three when they died, and she doesn't remember that event either. Though she was there, in the car, when it crashed on Long Island.

Tony's only ever spoken to her about it once, after she accused him of hating her for surviving when their parents died. Really, he hated that he survived.

When rescue workers arrived at the scene of the wreck, they found her parents dead in the front seat and her tucked safely into her car seat in the back, bundled up against the December cold. She was an orphan, and Tony, at twenty-one, was suddenly responsible for a toddler.

So, he did the only thing he could think of. He hired a series of nannies to raise her, then sent her off to boarding school as soon as she was old enough, all the while playing genius, billionaire playboy.

He wasn’t surprised when it turned out she was just as smart as him or their father. And it surprised him less when she followed in his footsteps and attended MIT. What did surprise him was when she started hacking government databases for fun. She only agreed to work for him at Stark Industries in exchange for him not sticking Rhodey on her after she released documents regarding the US Air Force‘s involvement in some less that savory overseas dealings.

On the plane, she starts an email to Steve telling him where she was headed and what she had found. Then she deletes it and starts over. Then deletes that. She chews her thumbnail and thinks. If she tells Steve where Bucky is, he'll come blazing in, shield at the ready, and Bucky will.... She doesn’t know what Bucky will do, but she has a feeling the encounter would end with a fight and Bucky running. Which will kill Steve. Again. So, she decides she doesn't need to tell Steve – not right away. She'll see if she can figure out what Bucky remembers – if anything – before telling Steve where he is.

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A little over forty-eight hours after her software found Bucky, Kate is assembling IKEA furniture in her new studio apartment in Romania. Getting the landlord to lease her the empty flat next to Bucky's was easy enough when Kate offered him double what he was asking in rent. He was discreet enough to not ask any questions. Most of the people in the building were hiding from something so a young American woman who paid cash upfront wasn't the most unusual thing he'd dealt with.

She makes her bed, unpacks her suitcase, and re-reads the Winter Soldier file. That night she dreams of her parents and the wreck that killed them. In the dream there's always a man outside of the car, but she can never see his face. Her father begs for help: "Help my wife, my daughter. Please. Help."

She wakes up sweating, a scream caught in her throat.

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The apartment next to his is no longer empty. Bucky can hear music and soft footsteps through the paper-thin walls. If he focuses his hearing, he can hear a heartbeat other than his own, but he's working to turn off the super soldier reflexes, so he tries to ignore it. He's enjoyed the silence that the empty apartment afforded him, and he hopes the new tenant isn’t as nosy as his neighbor in Kiev who had asked so many questions. He hadn't stayed long after that meeting.

Around two in the morning, he wakes to the sound of a strangled cry from his new neighbor. Bucky sits up straight, suddenly on alert. He listens closely, focusing for the sounds of a struggle, but he only hears the unfamiliar heartbeat. His neighbor was having a nightmare, he imagines. He had plenty of those himself.

Sometimes he was staring down the barrel of a gun, his only intent to kill. Other nightmares took him back to the HYDRA base and their machine that scrambled his thoughts over and over again. And others found him falling from a train, the blonde man from the Triskelion reaching out toward him. He always wakes up just before he hits the icy river he knows awaits him.

Bucky knows now that the blonde man is Steve Rogers. Without HYDRA's influence, he's started to remember more: flashes of Steve and a group called the Howling Commandos during the war, but also flashes of Steve before the war, smaller, shorter. And flashes of a family – his family – a father, a mother, a sister. Rebecca. The name comes to him one afternoon while he's browsing the used bookstore near his flat.

He's started eating plums and jogging to improve his memory. He isn't sure if it's helping, but the memories are becoming longer and more frequent. He sees himself with Steve at Coney Island, riding the Cyclone until Steve lost his lunch and Bucky laughed so hard tears were streaming down his face, and he sees himself flirting with an auburn-haired combat nurse in Italy, following her back to her tent and undressing her slowly.

He wakes the next morning feeling restless. He had slept in fits and starts, listening for any more disturbances from next door. None came.

He dresses and goes for a run, and when he returns, he catches his first glimpse of his new neighbor. She's coming out of her apartment, her face turned downward toward her phone. When he reaches the top of the stairs, she lifts her head and smiles. Bucky is struck by how pretty she is, a thought he hasn't let himself have since leaving HYDRA. He turns away quickly and slams the door to his own apartment. He doesn't need pink lips and dark curls reminding him of what he can never have again. He's too broken for her, or anyone else for that matter.

_____

Bucky has seen his new neighbor more times in five days than he's seen anyone else in the building over the past two months. They always seem to be coming or going at the same time.

The first time he actually speaks to her, she's dropping groceries up the stairs from a rip in her canvas bag.

"Fuck," she mutters as an apple rolls beneath the railing and falls to the landing below.

Bucky has a brief vision of her uttering that same word while his head is buried between her legs, but he shakes if off quickly.

"Let me," he says in English, scooping up some rogue potatoes and taking the bag from her.

"Thanks," she says before unlocking her door and holding it open for him.

Her apartment is the same layout as his – one room, with a tiny bathroom at the front and a small kitchen along the back wall. He sets the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and steps back.

"I should—"

"Thank you—"

They both speak at the same time. Bucky bows his head and motions for her to continue.

"Thank you for your help." She pauses. "And it's nice to speak English for a change. My Romanian is atrocious," she laughs. "How’d you guess?"

"All the music you listen to is in English," he replies brusquely.

She cringes. "Sorry. I'll turn it down."

"No," he says, "It's fine. Really."

There's an awkward pause as they both stare at each other.

Bucky breaks the silence first. "I should go."

"Right." She leads him to the door. "Thanks."

Bucky nods.

When his own apartment door closes behind him, he sighs and scrubs his right hand over his face. He needs to avoid her. He doesn't need anything to distract him from regaining his memories, and he certainly doesn't need to get close to someone he'll inevitably hurt. He doesn’t even begin let himself entertain the thought that she could be a HYDRA agent waiting to turn him in.

_____

Later that evening, he's startled by a knock at his door. When he peers into the hallway, there's a plate of food on the floor, covered with a cloth and a note. He picks it up.

Thanks for saving my groceries.

- Kate

Bucky considers the possibilities that she is a HYDRA agent and the food is poisoned, but he decides it's unlikely HYDRA would take that approach. If anything, they would want their soldier back, and if they didn't, they wouldn't kill him quickly. Also, he can't remember the last time he had a home-cooked meal – definitely before the war – and he’s starving. Protein bars aren’t really cutting it anymore.

He studies the note as he eats. He runs his fingers over the name written in curling handwriting: Kate, and debates what his next move should be. He needs to ignore her – for her own safety – but his mother raised a gentleman so he should at least thank her for dinner, right?

_____

Kate nearly steps on the plate when she leaves her flat the next morning for a run. It’s sitting right at her doorway, clean, the dish towel she had with it folded with a note peeking out.

Kate,

You’re welcome. Thank you for dinner.

- Bucky

If she knew how long Bucky had agonized over whether to write back, she probably would have cried. Kate definitely would have cried if she knew he had debated whether or not to sign the note “Bucky” or “James.” He’s been using James at any off-the-books odd jobs he can get, but with his memories returning, he’s been feeling more like the Bucky Steve referred to in DC.

_____

Kate makes a potato soup that night and leaves it outside his door sans note. She brings him dinner for a week straight before she asks him to dine with her.

"Come over,” she says the next time they pass in the hall.

"What?" Bucky freezes.

"Come over tonight,” Kate repeats, “for dinner.”

"Why?" He sounds rude. He should really work on that, but she’s caught him in one of his broodier moods after another sleepless night.

"Why not?” she shrugs. “I have wine."

He’s staring at her. He realizes he needs to stop staring at her and answer.

“Okay.”

“Seven thirty?” she suggests.

"Okay," he replies.

"Okay," she laughs.

For a second, Bucky wonders if she's laughing at him, but there's a softness in her eyes that makes him think not. Talking to women used to be easy, he thinks. It took him hours to come up with the simplest response to her note the other night, and now he can't even form a sentence in front of her. He spends the rest of the day worrying he's made a huge mistake in accepting her invitation.

He's not the only one. Kate has half a mind to call it all off, phone Steve, and get on the next plane back to New York. What if he doesn't remember anything? What if he's still the Winter Soldier? She has a brief vision of Bucky snapping and wrapping that metal hand he's been hiding around her throat – and not in a fun way. But when he knocks on her door at seven thirty, she thinks she might actually die from how sweet he looks.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," he responds, running his tongue over his lips nervously.

They're caught in another awkward moment of just staring at each other when she finally invites him.

The old Bucky would have bought flowers and then made some quip about how the flowers aren't nearly as beautiful as she is, but this Bucky – post-HYDRA Bucky – feels like he's forgotten how to interact with women at all and his tongue has suddenly turned to lead.

Kate's debated how much to reveal about herself. Finally, she decides she'll tell him everything. Well, mostly everything. He doesn't need to know that she's a Stark or friends with Steve Rogers or here on some crazy rescue mission to save the Winter Soldier because maybe, just maybe, she read his file one too many times and got caught up in the look in Steve's eyes when he talked about Bucky. No, he doesn't need to know that.

Kate's also considered how much to ask him about himself. She wants to know what – if anything – he remembers, but she also doesn't want to give herself away by revealing she knows who he really is. And she doubts he’ll tell her outright. The fact that he signed the note Bucky seems like a good indication that his memories are returning, though.

"How long have you been in Bucharest, Bucky?" she asks, plating their dinner.

"Almost two months," he says.

"Here for work?" she asks casually.

"Uh...it's complicated," he says, scratching at the back of his neck. "You?"

She looks up at him. "It's complicated."

They're staring at each other again, and Bucky has to force himself to look away.

"Family?" she asks.

"Also complicated," he says. God, he thinks, he sounds like a jackass. But it's not like he can tell her he's a ninety-eight-year-old ex-assassin in hiding so his family is probably long dead.

She motions for him to sit at her small kitchen table and sets a plate in front of him.

"You're not hiding a wedding ring under those gloves, are you?" she asks, a smirk on her lips. She knows about his arm; she just wants to see what he’ll give away.

He blushes and looks at his hands. Then he realizes he's taking too long to answer, and she probably thinks he's an idiot. "No... uh...no. No," he finally says without elaborating.

Kate can sense he's nervous so she does what Tony would do in a situation like this and just keeps talking. She tells him about Tony – minus the Stark detail. She talks about MIT and New York and the last book she read. He listens closely, laughing softly when she makes jokes and asking questions where appropriate. He likes the way her lips look when they form his name and the way her eyes light up at her own humor.

When they finish eating, Bucky helps her wash dishes. She considers asking him to stay, watch a movie or something, but then she thinks maybe she should take this slowly, not overwhelm him, so she bids him goodnight and closes the door behind him.

Bucky thinks Kate might be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. Then he thinks that might be because she’s the first woman he’s interacted with in so long. Either way, he tries not to think of her that night when his body remembers what it's like to be a man.

He decides that staying away from her would be too hard.

On the other side of the wall, she’s thinking of him, too. She hadn't expected his eyes to be so impossibly blue. She had stared at the black and white military photo for hours, but seeing him in person, she was caught in the Arctic waters that made up his eyes.

_____

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